(to preface, for this post im going to use trans rep as my primary discussion example but i think this line of thought could be applied to basically any marginalized group)

honestly regarding that last reblog and the essay i left in the tags, i dont want to hear anyone praising anything for ‘good representation’ or condemning anything for ‘bad representation’ ever again i think.

firstly because people are so braindead that they cant meaningfully identify either good or bad representation. everything that i like is good and everything that i dont is bad. anything created by any trans person is good and anything created by any cis person is bad. everything that is kind and saccharine is good and everything that is angry and miserable is bad.

(seriously if i have to see one more take thats like ‘media that centers around trans suffering is bad and harmful because i dont like it and it makes me uncomfortable it turns trans suffering into a profitable spectacle, and besides being trans can be a good thing actually its not all about pain’, im going to bite somebody. im sorry that a) u dont understand that sometimes the intent of the media or stories like that is to hurt u and make u uncomfortable, b) u dont understand that someone expressing the pain they felt Because they are trans, and that they wouldnt have felt if they werent trans, is a valid form of art and self expression, and u have no right to condemn them because u dont personally connect with it, c) u dont understand that media doing the bare minimum of including a trans character who isnt hatecrimed against isnt ‘celebrating transness’ and can absolutely also be turning trans pride into a profitable spectacle, and d) that ur making all of this my fucking problem. it is not bad or morally incorrect to connect with and represent pain, especially at the hands of bigotry. my god.)

secondly because arguably it will never fucking matter anyway until society at large comes to terms with and moves past whatever -phobia or -ism we decide to center the discussion on that week.

‘good’ trans rep is never going to change a bigots mind or heart because their problem isnt that they just havent learned the error of their ways: their problem is that they hate an entire group of people on the basis that this group of people threatens their status as majority, moral correctness/worthiness, controller, group in power, whatever—whether this is materially true or a paranoid delusion. likewise, ‘good’ trans rep is never going to be enough for trans people to feel validated because of the way society has been marginalizing and oppressing trans people for longer than most of us here have even been alive, and continues to do so. it will feel nice in the moment, to see that people outside of urself and maybe even outside of ur marginalized group dont think of u as subhuman waste, but that feeling will not last forever as long as hate crimes and bigoted policy keep getting real life trans people hurt, jailed, and/or killed. idk about anyone else but nowadays its incredibly difficult for me to feel anything but contempt, dread, numbness, looking at ‘good’ trans rep while all that stuff is still happening on the daily in real life. its like a pathetic consolation prize for putting up with the horrors of existing, ‘thank u for buying our product despite what feels like most people wishing u were dead, heres this cool sticker to acknowledge ur existence and ur status as one of the ones who doesnt Deserve to be dead because ur buying our product’.

‘bad’ trans rep is never going to push an indecisive person over the fence into blatant transphobia because, to a bigot, ANY trans rep in ANYTHING for ANY REASON is ‘bad rep’. childrens books with the softest, cleanest language possible to describe trans experiences are treated like manifestos written to radicalize our good pure innocent children into horrible sexually depraved monsters. drag queens and trans people interacting with children AT ALL are demonized and called pedophiles just for existing in the same space as children. hospitals that provide safe and necessary treatment to trans people as ONE of the services they provide are issued bomb threats for daring to care about peoples health. the HINT of anything to do with being trans is a call for outrage. yeah, that transphobic caricature in that tv show really sucks to see, but its not turning people into transphobes: it is broadcasting the already material reality that transphobes think of us as subhuman waste, deserving of ridicule At Best and total extinction At Worst. a person who becomes a vocal bigot after being exposed to ‘bad’ rep wasnt an ally before that changed their mind, they were just quiet. what is the point of ‘educating’ people how to spot ‘bad’ rep and call it out if all it does is reaffirm to us that we know how to spot it and condemn? how many transphobes have said ‘i thought trans people were demons and pedophiles for the longest time, but then a random tumblr user wrote a scathing review of this random trans character and how they were a totally unrealistic and nasty depiction of a trans person, and it just opened my eyes to the fact that trans people are actually people, turns out’? when that number is larger than the number of transphobes who have said ‘i didnt really know what to think of trans people before tucker carlson and matt walsh told me they were molesting our childrens minds, but now i know theyre a threat to society’, get back with me.

like. im so fucking tired at this point. im obviously very angry and passionate about this, but im tired too. im tired of people constantly trying to say that society is getting better, trans people are becoming more welcomed in society, because of the handful of trans characters in media and the pride shirts and mugs and shit that u can buy in chain stores, while literal atrocities happen every. fucking. day. i cant be okay or happy with ‘good’ trans rep anymore because it matters so little in the context of how people on the whole view trans people, and i cant be upset with ‘bad’ trans rep anymore because its a symptom of hate and ignorance, not the cause.

i reiterate.

society and corporations are selling us pride through hollow ‘representation’ in media and slogans on mugs for the express purpose of keeping us from fighting to FEEL pride. and all the glorious spotless squeaky morally clean rep in the world will not account for the absolute loathing i have felt from every other direction for years, and the loathing everyone else has felt for decades, and the loathing were all gonna continue feeling for god knows how much longer until people and politicians stop actively trying to criminalize and kill us.

Idk if ur the right person to send this to so feel free to ignore if you aren't but I'm beginning to realize that I might be a trans guy after years of thinking I'm enby and I'm really struggling with that? I've received a lot of the messages over the years about how men are bad and violent and I've also experienced a lot of gender based violence before I was out. I know intellectually that there's nothing wrong with manhood and yet I'm still really struggling. Idk do you have any thoughts on learning to accept your own manhood

Okay! Sorry this took a few days to answer but this is...definitely still a complicated thing for me, too.

First off I wanna say that whether you end up identifying as a binary trans man or somewhere in between that and nonbinary, that is very cool and valid and all of this can apply no matter where on the spectrum of masculinity you ultimately end up falling.

I saw a post which explains the basic thesis of what I'm gonna say, which is that your gender does not equal your morality. 

Tumblr in particular really likes to go hard on the misandry and it can be really hard not to internalize that. Especially when it comes in the form of so many jokes, and especially especially when some of it does line up with experiences you’ve had. The biggest thing to realize, is that just *being a man* doesn't make you inherently violent or toxic or bad. All of the things that Tumblr and feminism in general tends to equate to “being a man = bad” are things that are learned or encouraged over time, no matter how much terfs like to insist they are traits inherent in being born with a y chromosome. 

(And yes, these misandry arguments ALL have their basis in gender essentialism and in arguing why trans people can’t exist.)

As this relates to trans men, it becomes akin to walking a tightrope our entire lives. In both society at large and LGBT spaces we're made to fit as close as possible into gender norms to avoid violence or oppression(or the insistence we’re really just lesbians or self-hating cishets). But we also have first hand experience of the ways in which men are *socialized* to behave being harmful and don’t want to perpetuate them and be labeled a ‘bad person’. So we have to constantly walk this line of, I suppose trying to act manly enough while also trying not to cause waves (And, AS A NOTE, does that sound eerily similar to the argument most feminists say is purely a feminine experience? Is it almost like the very system that seeks to free cis women through hatred of men perpetrates those exact same systems onto other marginalized communities?)

And I will say, this is something I still struggle with. A lot. It's not going to be something you can take a magic pill for and never have to worry about again. I started transitioning almost a decade ago and I'm still trying to find the balance. Cis men can spend their *whole lives* trying to find that balance. I know quite a few - in case it feels like this is a purely trans experience. Reckoning with the way that male privilege has socialized men to harm at the same time radical feminism has socialized everyone it can that all men intentionally cause harm is a universal experience among men who are aware of it. 

It's not easy, and I guess just...if you feel like you're struggling on that front as you continue your gender journey(Laynie i hate you i hate you i hate you) try to remind yourself that you're not alone. And that what you’re fighting against is a systemic socialization, not something inherent in yourself. You’re going to screw up - that doesn't make you a bad person or a bad man.

I listen a lot to Brene Brown. 

I know people are probably sick of hearing me talk about her, but she is a shame researcher who honestly helped me a LOT in realizing why I was feeling so bad about parts of my personality or my gender expression. She’s excellent. If you find you’re having a lot of trouble reckoning with being this thing you have perceived as bad for a very long time, I highly recommend listening to some of her ted talks and other speeches. Most of them are on youtube. 

For a long time I was trying to base my gender off of what I thought people would love. I went over the top, dressed in popular styles, was WAY more feminine than I actually feel, and tried to make myself as unassuming as possible - in part because of childhood trauma but also because I was genuinely ashamed to be a man(particularly a gay man) because I had internalized the idea that men - especially gay men - were woman-haters. (And, because I hated *myself* as a woman, I thought that I also hated women, and I thought that I must be one of those Bad Gays.)

But once I stopped trying to do that? Once I was like ‘no I’m actually a gay-up man’ and stopped berating myself for not liking my feminie body and hating the parts of myself that I didn’t identify with but felt forced to perform? Once I started looking at what made *me* happy and not other people? It became so much easier to not feel those things. 

SO I guess, what I’m saying is that the best way to deal with internalized misandry is to try to forgive yourself, and recognize that the things that men perpetrated against you and that people say are ‘toxic male traits’ are not *inherent* to being a man. They are things that are taught to men(both cis and trans) by society. And also that like, these are also things that are not just inherent to men. Any toxic trait that a man exhibits a woman can too - and yeah there’s a discussion about how the general power imbalance between men and women makes it less likely a woman would cause as much damage but honestly? If you’re on tumblr you’re most likely in female dominated spaces where arguably that isn’t true, especially with the number of fucking TERFS on this website. 

Also....you do not inherit cismale privilege just by identifying as a man. No matter how far you take your transition, you are *always* going to be at a different level of privilege from a cisman. Even if you transition as far as you are able to right now and live and pass as a cisman for the rest of your life, you are not a cisman and that is going to affect how you move through the world.

(That doesn’t mean you are not a *man* because you are not cis, btw. Just that there are things that cismen don’t have to worry about that are going to affect your life - things like ovarian cancer, breast cancer, hormonal dependence, corrective abuse, medical shortages, physical differences that out transpeople - there are a hundred things that trans men have to experience throughout their lives that cismen are never, ever going to deal with. And yes, this goes for transwomen / cis women as well.)

Something that helped me become comfortable living as a man was to look at specific traits of the men in my life. Why did I feel comfortable around this man, but not others, what red flags physically or emotionally did this behavior set off in me? And then focusing on those specific *behaviors* rather than the men themselves. If you can separate the individual traits from an overarching idea of 'manhood' that might be helpful in feeling like you can inhabit manhood without being toxic. 

Basically, my best advice is to tell yourself that what makes you a man does not make you inherently toxic. In fact what makes *all* men, men, does not make them inherently toxic. Men are not trash just because they’re men, and the fight against misandry *is* a fight for marginalized people. It hurts transmasculine people in exactly the ways you are hurting. No matter what TERFs say - no matter what male-critical or whatever they’re calling themselves to not have to call themselves TERFs say - men are not born evil, or bad, or trash. 

Toxic masculinity is a learned behavior. It is not something you are given the day you start identifying as a man, and it is not something you have to perpetuate. 

Calling it anything else does a disservice to everyone who identifies as masculine of center but especially trans men, who have to reckon with this exact knowledge that in affirming who they are, certain people are going to hate them and call them monsters and tell them they are trash and unworthy of loving without hurting. 

And that shit just isn’t true. It isn’t fucking true! Men are not toxic just because they are men, and you are not a bad person just because you are a transman. That’s, I suppose, the best advice I can offer you. I hope it helps, and I also just want to reiterate that I hope you find affirmation in whatever you end up deciding. <3 <3 <3

le thoughts

something that bothers me about lesbian discourse i’ve seen, and a large part of why i’ve stopped really self-identifying as a “lesbian”, is how even among very well-meaning trans-positive groups or groups of lesbians who are trans themselves (at least online), a major problem always remains IMO not fully resolved: how to deal with closeted and questioning amab trans people, or people with nonstandard gender lacking the language to articulate it, without seeing them as Men in some degree.

it’s not that many don’t try, and i’m certain there are (and i know) very many lesbians who would (rightly) affirm in a heartbeat that such people are not "men”. but i’ve never seen a satisfying argument that really lays our anxieties to rest. as much as the idea that political lesbianism inherently supports transfems as a function of “centering women” or “the lesbian” may feel validating to transfems laboring to define themselves as clearly as possible as “not a man”, within the political framework often assumed by lesbian feminists i don't think this is a problem that ever can be really resolved.

----

in popular discourse about oppression there is the idea that oppression is a sort of relationship of individual wrongdoing, the “responsibility” for which ultimately lies at the feet of individuals, even if those individuals are seen as a “structural” group. in this worldview it is “men” who, as a collective of responsible parties, for their own self-benefit and pleasure, commit violence against women and those who aren’t men.

it’s controversial perhaps, but contrary to what you may hear on this site, there is no ‘secret cheat code’ for women to liberate themselves from patriarchal society when it’s all around them. it’s good and necessary to understand that you don’t have to date men, but the truth is that regardless of whether or not you date men we live in a misogynist society and trying to separate from it by divesting ourselves from Men - even where we don’t explicitly call it “separatism” or even “divesting” - isn’t going to save us, and the idea that we can become more or less liberated or more or less revolutionary or what have you by refusing Men and relationships with Men on the basis that Men are the source of oppression by virtue of being “Men” rests on flawed assumptions about gender that cause problems for transfems, and all of us.

the idea that “men” simply oppress women out of a kind of individual self-interest that either they are individually born with, or is somehow transmitted to them by their social man-ness (or their “privilege” makes pursuing their interests inherently detrimental to others, to put it another way), is not really compatible with an understanding of transness that goes further than saying that trans people were “born this way”. although many people, especially trans feminists and lesbians, are aware by now that thinking of trans people as being “born” trans is as mistaken as saying people are “born gay”, those that (rightly!) try to help defend transfems from accusations of “male privilege” still tend to latch on to narratives that essentially say the same thing.

that is, even if we recognize that babies can’t have gender, we say that transfems at least had decided their gender more or less from the point where they could first make conscious social decisions, and as such must be seen as having always been girls or non-men. therefore, when transphobes yammer that all people in patriarchal society are subject to “socialization” which corresponds exactly to assigned gender and defines their gender, we can answer: no, transfems were subject to transfeminine socialization, which decisively qualifies them as always having been feminine.

----

but the problem with this idea is that it takes “socialization” entirely at face value and ends up performing the same function: peoples’ gender largely isn’t decided by them; it was locked in once before a person’s social being really came to exist, and can’t change again. it denies the possibility that anyone who considers theirself to have been a “man” at any point in their life could ever be something different. it takes away trans peoples’ agency - and more importantly, it denies the possibility that patriarchal gender could ever really be transcended, since if cis peoples’ genders and interests too are basically locked in at toddlerhood if not at birth, then how can we ever envision doing away with it all?

so to be clear: it’s not “socialization” that makes peoples’ gender. if there is anything to be said about socialization, it is that gender is constituted not by socialization but by individual agency in response to that socialization, struggling against the conditions imposed upon them and what they've been told to accept.

but ultimately, the problem with all of our attempts to grapple with closeted and questioning people lies in the privilege framework itself. so long as we still take the idea of “privilege” seriously - that there are these identity categories to which people “belong” and which essentially determine their self-interests or the effect that pursuing their interests has on others (”mens’ privilege means that their benefit inherently comes at others’ cost”), which amounts to the same thing - then men can only be understood in such a way that ever being associated with men or seeing one’s self as a man (up to and including being attracted to and dating men, “gaining privilege” by becoming a “collaborator” of sorts) makes one inherently tainted with privilege and therefore wrongdoing for which one must be “held accountable”, that is, they must “pay for their crimes”.

----

when we see gender and oppression this way, yet try to understand transfemininity in a way that doesn’t give credence to “male privilege”, we run into irresolvable problems: we end up having to define all transfems as effectively always having been feminine as long as they were conscious, which may be the case for some - but thinking this is how it always works makes cis society seem inevitable and impossible to dismantle in the end. and because the privileged must always be “held accountable” for their privilege we have to say that, well it’s unfortunate but good feminists must treat “men” as inherently guilty of the sins of being men until they can prove otherwise that they are not really men. because if we try not to see people who call themselves men in this way, then the entire framework of resistance to patriarchy built on privilege starts to break down.

paradoxically, in defining privilege as a relationship of individual wrongdoing flowing from the social category to which one allegedly belongs, “privilege” sees people not really as people, but as mere representations of abstract categories: individual “men” become really mere physical appendages of the abstract category of Men, and become individually defined as oppressors, while non-men in turn likewise become defined as personifications of their position within gendered oppression. but there is a way out of this mess. i find it more useful and compelling to see people first as individuals who are potentially involved in structural dynamics but not inevitably so. while abstract social structures really do exist, and often dominate us, compel our actions, and structure our spontaneous consciousness (our understanding of the world before any analysis), again, it is our individual agency struggling up against the conditions imposed upon us that defines who we are, and defines our structural relationship to the world in turn.

furthermore, punishment is the logic of capitalism. as the Soviet legal scholar Evgeny Pashukanis wrote, the idea of equivalent punishment to an equivalent “crime” can only arise in the context of capitalism and the commodity fetish. capitalism is a society where we relate to other people first and foremost as owners of commodities and where we obtain almost everything we need to live and enjoy life through buying and selling. in capitalism, the underlying logic of commodities - the logic of value, where two objects are socially held to be equal in trade regardless of their concrete properties that actually make them useful to humans - comes to seem like the primary natural property of all commodities. and because commodity owners always interact first through the comparison of their commodities, and not through a direct social relationship, it comes to seem as though all human relationships are really properties of commodities themselves which can be exchanged: the legal commodity of “rights”, or “dignity” as David Graeber might put it.

the logic of punishment knows no concept of healing and problem-solving, only a very simple math equation: so long as the offender has not served their sentence and “paid their debt”, justice remains unserved, and so the sin of privilege which makes one harmful regardless of one’s intent must always linger with those who were supposedly tainted by it. even if we can define all transfems who’ve realized their gender as having been always women, we find ourselves failing on a collective basis to help those who still lack the language or confidence to articulate themselves.

we can do away with all of this horrible nonsense. if we are really to do justice to transfems in a way that doesn’t frame us as in some sense "privileged” or “men” or a natural aberration within cis society or see cis society as inevitable, we can and urgently need to abandon notions of privilege and punishment.

For Trans People in the Service Industry, Discrimination Is an Unfortunate Reality of the Job

Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

A Supreme Court ruling makes it illegal to discriminate against an employee based on sexual orientation or gender, but that barely begins to address the unique pressures and harassment faced by trans service workers

On June 15, in a historic case, the Supreme Court held that federal law forbids discriminating against an employee solely because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Such an action would be considered discrimination under Title VII, as “an employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” writes Justice Neil Gorsuch. In other words, a workplace couldn’t legally fire a man for having a husband because it wouldn’t fire a woman for having a husband. If “the employer intentionally penalizes a person identified as male at birth for traits or actions that it tolerates in an employee identified as female at birth,” it’s discrimination “because of … sex.”

Much of the praise for the ruling comes from the fact that it’s been a long time coming. Until now, it’s been legal in more than half of U.S. states to fire someone for being gay, bisexual, or trans, even though it’s clearly a discriminatory practice. “The Supreme Court’s decision provides the nation with great news during a time when it is sorely needed. To hear the highest court in the land say LGBTQ people are, and should be, protected from discrimination under federal law is a historic moment,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, in a statement. However, she notes, “we still have more work to do to ensure that transgender people can fully live their lives without fear of discrimination for being who they are.”

The food service industry has often been a place for society’s “outcasts,” including LGBTQ people, to find acceptance and community. But while this ruling is a win for LGBTQ rights in general, trans and nonbinary people in the food service industry are questioning how much of an effect it’ll have on everyday life — and imagining what could be done to effect tangible change.

Niko Prytula, a nonbinary person who lives in Virginia, only recently stopped working in food service after eight years, most recently at a fine dining establishment with extremely formal practices. At most of their jobs, they were never open about their gender identity. “I was always out as queer, and there were not that many places where I was the only queer person on staff,” they say, “but when I was working fine dining, that was the first time where it felt like it would be a genuine obstacle to be out.”

Most of that was not because of the risk of discrimination from management, but rather from customers. Prytula recalls the extraordinarily gendered style of service, which required serving the oldest woman at the table first, referring to coworkers and patrons as “Mister” or “Miss,” and serving mostly older, white customers. “I do think [coming out] would have just made things very complicated,” they say. “I feel like it would have required me to create almost like a flowchart for my coworkers of like, ‘Okay, so I want you guys to use the correct pronouns for me, but you can let the tables misgender me all they want, because I don’t want to get in an argument with some elderly person when it’s literally a matter of my income.’”

Lucky Michaels, a trans rights activist and bartender at Storico at the New York Historical Society, says “as a trans person, job security is huge.” Michaels, a nonbinary trans woman, has been working in hospitality since the late ’90s, and says that because of the need for job security, “most of the trans people that I find [in the industry] are absolutely in the closet, stealth because it’s a really toxic work environment for people in general.” It’s not just discrimination from customers; it’s also the hypermasculine kitchen culture that persists in restaurants to this day.

Having a job is a high bar to clear for many trans people, says Michaels. “If you don’t have a house to go home to, or a place to change your clothes and shower or eat, how are you going to be able to get or sustain a job in the first place?” While the risk of losing a job is worrisome for everyone, unemployment, homelessness, and food insecurity are things that affect trans people more across the board. According to an April 2020 report from the Williams Institute looking at pre-pandemic numbers, “78.1 percent of trans adults are in the workforce, 12.8 percent of whom are unemployed, translating to an estimated 139,700 trans people unemployed (and looking for work) nationwide. In comparison, between 3.9 percent and 4.9 percent of U.S. adults in the labor force are unemployed.”

However, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated those numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the unemployment rate at 13.3 percent for May. And according to the Human Rights Campaign, trans people have been more likely to have lost their jobs during the pandemic and economic crisis: “19 percent of transgender people and 26 percent of transgender people of color have become unemployed due to COVID-19, compared to 17 percent of LGBTQ people and 12 percent of the general population.” The numbers are particularly bad for the food industry. The BLS reports that an additional 1.2 million jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector were lost in May, on top of the 7.4 million lost in April. And HRC reports that LGBTQ people are more likely to work in industries affected by COVID-19, including 2 million (15 percent) who work in restaurants and food services.

The SCOTUS decision sets a precedent, both legal and social, and signals to employers that there are bigger consequences for discrimination, but bigoted employers will always find other ways to alienate and push out trans employees. (The ruling does not apply to contractors, like most delivery drivers or Instacart shoppers.) Both Prytula and Michaels note how rare it would be to have “evidence” of a boss firing someone because they are trans. “I can’t tell you the number of times that people have tried to get rid of me because I’m trans without saying, ‘This is because you’re trans,’” says Michaels. “I’ve had managers and chefs try to get me to quit or leave, that have thrown around really horrible language. They’ll be using ‘faggot,’ I’ll be barred from the restroom of my gender identity, they give you inappropriate schedules, they give you inappropriate uniforms.”

The nature of the ruling also just doesn’t apply when much of working in the food service industry involves interacting with customers, who are essentially your bosses for 90 minutes at a time and are under no legal requirement to treat you fairly. “If you’re no longer allowed to be fired for being queer, but your income depends on whether or not guests find you palatable, or performing the right way, or, god help you, attractive, it doesn’t really help that much,” says Prytula.

Then there’s the issue of at-will employment. If you work without a union that has argued for just-cause termination, in most states, your boss can fire you without reason anyway. “Often the unique circumstances and additional burdens queer, and especially trans folks live with can make them more susceptible to ‘fireable offenses,’” says V Spehar, a nonbinary person who has worked in the hospitality industry for years, and who most recently was the Director of Impact at the James Beard Foundation, focusing on Women’s Leadership & LGBTQ programs. “Being late, having to grin and bear rude customers’ comments, lack of emotional or mental support, lack of secure housing or familial support” are all reasons that an employee could be seen as “not the right fit.”

On an encouraging note, there are other legislative pushes that, while helping all workers, could protect trans people specifically. Prytula says doing away with tipped minimum wage would mean trans food service workers would be more likely to earn a living wage without monitoring their appearance for the sake of transphobic customers. Doing away with at-will employment could do a lot too, as Sarah Jones writes for New York Magazine, as trying to sue your former employers for trans discrimination “can burden workers who don’t have the independent means to hold their former employers accountable.”

Spehar also says more change needs to come from within the industry, and not only from outside legislation. “Without creating a culture of understanding for the out-of-work burdens that disproportionately affect the LGBTQ community, we are all still held to the same ‘professional’ standards and expectations created by cis white culture,” they say. That means restaurant owners and nonprofits prioritizing anti-bias training, putting resources toward helping queer and trans people open their own businesses, and centering the fact that the food industry “is built foundationally on black, queer, women’s, and immigrant’s labor.” And making sure these issues take priority outside of Pride month, when many businesses use the LGBTQ community for marketing gimmicks.

Michaels still sees the food service industry as a place where trans people can thrive. She notes that James Beard was an out gay man at a time when that wasn’t widely accepted, and how restaurants and bars, especially Black- and women-owned restaurants and organizations, are committing themselves to diversity, equity, and inclusion work. But she also notes there’s a bigger picture outside the rights of those who find employment. “I don’t know that it is in legislation,” says Michaels. The SCOTUS ruling is an important piece in the massive, and mostly incomplete, puzzle of legislation and activism that’s needed to truly secure equitable treatment for trans people. “Legislation, as we’ve seen, can be fickle, and driven by administration, politicized,” says Spehar, “and in the end will never do what humanity and compassion from the industry can do.”

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2VwynCf https://ift.tt/3dR4WkV

Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

A Supreme Court ruling makes it illegal to discriminate against an employee based on sexual orientation or gender, but that barely begins to address the unique pressures and harassment faced by trans service workers

On June 15, in a historic case, the Supreme Court held that federal law forbids discriminating against an employee solely because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Such an action would be considered discrimination under Title VII, as “an employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” writes Justice Neil Gorsuch. In other words, a workplace couldn’t legally fire a man for having a husband because it wouldn’t fire a woman for having a husband. If “the employer intentionally penalizes a person identified as male at birth for traits or actions that it tolerates in an employee identified as female at birth,” it’s discrimination “because of … sex.”

Much of the praise for the ruling comes from the fact that it’s been a long time coming. Until now, it’s been legal in more than half of U.S. states to fire someone for being gay, bisexual, or trans, even though it’s clearly a discriminatory practice. “The Supreme Court’s decision provides the nation with great news during a time when it is sorely needed. To hear the highest court in the land say LGBTQ people are, and should be, protected from discrimination under federal law is a historic moment,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, in a statement. However, she notes, “we still have more work to do to ensure that transgender people can fully live their lives without fear of discrimination for being who they are.”

The food service industry has often been a place for society’s “outcasts,” including LGBTQ people, to find acceptance and community. But while this ruling is a win for LGBTQ rights in general, trans and nonbinary people in the food service industry are questioning how much of an effect it’ll have on everyday life — and imagining what could be done to effect tangible change.

Niko Prytula, a nonbinary person who lives in Virginia, only recently stopped working in food service after eight years, most recently at a fine dining establishment with extremely formal practices. At most of their jobs, they were never open about their gender identity. “I was always out as queer, and there were not that many places where I was the only queer person on staff,” they say, “but when I was working fine dining, that was the first time where it felt like it would be a genuine obstacle to be out.”

Most of that was not because of the risk of discrimination from management, but rather from customers. Prytula recalls the extraordinarily gendered style of service, which required serving the oldest woman at the table first, referring to coworkers and patrons as “Mister” or “Miss,” and serving mostly older, white customers. “I do think [coming out] would have just made things very complicated,” they say. “I feel like it would have required me to create almost like a flowchart for my coworkers of like, ‘Okay, so I want you guys to use the correct pronouns for me, but you can let the tables misgender me all they want, because I don’t want to get in an argument with some elderly person when it’s literally a matter of my income.’”

Lucky Michaels, a trans rights activist and bartender at Storico at the New York Historical Society, says “as a trans person, job security is huge.” Michaels, a nonbinary trans woman, has been working in hospitality since the late ’90s, and says that because of the need for job security, “most of the trans people that I find [in the industry] are absolutely in the closet, stealth because it’s a really toxic work environment for people in general.” It’s not just discrimination from customers; it’s also the hypermasculine kitchen culture that persists in restaurants to this day.

Having a job is a high bar to clear for many trans people, says Michaels. “If you don’t have a house to go home to, or a place to change your clothes and shower or eat, how are you going to be able to get or sustain a job in the first place?” While the risk of losing a job is worrisome for everyone, unemployment, homelessness, and food insecurity are things that affect trans people more across the board. According to an April 2020 report from the Williams Institute looking at pre-pandemic numbers, “78.1 percent of trans adults are in the workforce, 12.8 percent of whom are unemployed, translating to an estimated 139,700 trans people unemployed (and looking for work) nationwide. In comparison, between 3.9 percent and 4.9 percent of U.S. adults in the labor force are unemployed.”

However, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated those numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the unemployment rate at 13.3 percent for May. And according to the Human Rights Campaign, trans people have been more likely to have lost their jobs during the pandemic and economic crisis: “19 percent of transgender people and 26 percent of transgender people of color have become unemployed due to COVID-19, compared to 17 percent of LGBTQ people and 12 percent of the general population.” The numbers are particularly bad for the food industry. The BLS reports that an additional 1.2 million jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector were lost in May, on top of the 7.4 million lost in April. And HRC reports that LGBTQ people are more likely to work in industries affected by COVID-19, including 2 million (15 percent) who work in restaurants and food services.

The SCOTUS decision sets a precedent, both legal and social, and signals to employers that there are bigger consequences for discrimination, but bigoted employers will always find other ways to alienate and push out trans employees. (The ruling does not apply to contractors, like most delivery drivers or Instacart shoppers.) Both Prytula and Michaels note how rare it would be to have “evidence” of a boss firing someone because they are trans. “I can’t tell you the number of times that people have tried to get rid of me because I’m trans without saying, ‘This is because you’re trans,’” says Michaels. “I’ve had managers and chefs try to get me to quit or leave, that have thrown around really horrible language. They’ll be using ‘faggot,’ I’ll be barred from the restroom of my gender identity, they give you inappropriate schedules, they give you inappropriate uniforms.”

The nature of the ruling also just doesn’t apply when much of working in the food service industry involves interacting with customers, who are essentially your bosses for 90 minutes at a time and are under no legal requirement to treat you fairly. “If you’re no longer allowed to be fired for being queer, but your income depends on whether or not guests find you palatable, or performing the right way, or, god help you, attractive, it doesn’t really help that much,” says Prytula.

Then there’s the issue of at-will employment. If you work without a union that has argued for just-cause termination, in most states, your boss can fire you without reason anyway. “Often the unique circumstances and additional burdens queer, and especially trans folks live with can make them more susceptible to ‘fireable offenses,’” says V Spehar, a nonbinary person who has worked in the hospitality industry for years, and who most recently was the Director of Impact at the James Beard Foundation, focusing on Women’s Leadership & LGBTQ programs. “Being late, having to grin and bear rude customers’ comments, lack of emotional or mental support, lack of secure housing or familial support” are all reasons that an employee could be seen as “not the right fit.”

On an encouraging note, there are other legislative pushes that, while helping all workers, could protect trans people specifically. Prytula says doing away with tipped minimum wage would mean trans food service workers would be more likely to earn a living wage without monitoring their appearance for the sake of transphobic customers. Doing away with at-will employment could do a lot too, as Sarah Jones writes for New York Magazine, as trying to sue your former employers for trans discrimination “can burden workers who don’t have the independent means to hold their former employers accountable.”

Spehar also says more change needs to come from within the industry, and not only from outside legislation. “Without creating a culture of understanding for the out-of-work burdens that disproportionately affect the LGBTQ community, we are all still held to the same ‘professional’ standards and expectations created by cis white culture,” they say. That means restaurant owners and nonprofits prioritizing anti-bias training, putting resources toward helping queer and trans people open their own businesses, and centering the fact that the food industry “is built foundationally on black, queer, women’s, and immigrant’s labor.” And making sure these issues take priority outside of Pride month, when many businesses use the LGBTQ community for marketing gimmicks.

Michaels still sees the food service industry as a place where trans people can thrive. She notes that James Beard was an out gay man at a time when that wasn’t widely accepted, and how restaurants and bars, especially Black- and women-owned restaurants and organizations, are committing themselves to diversity, equity, and inclusion work. But she also notes there’s a bigger picture outside the rights of those who find employment. “I don’t know that it is in legislation,” says Michaels. The SCOTUS ruling is an important piece in the massive, and mostly incomplete, puzzle of legislation and activism that’s needed to truly secure equitable treatment for trans people. “Legislation, as we’ve seen, can be fickle, and driven by administration, politicized,” says Spehar, “and in the end will never do what humanity and compassion from the industry can do.”

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2VwynCf via Blogger https://ift.tt/3dOiTjb

Some Thoughts on the Structure of Discourse  (and Why It's Faulty)

Hi guys! I’m sure a lot of you have noticed, but the discourse has turned to shit. I wanted to provide some thoughts on the topic, but it’s some stuff I’ve been meaning to stay for awhile. If you’re worried about the current state of the discourse, I encourage you to read this.

Also this took me three hours to write and I’m mentally ill as hell so please validate my questionable decision to write all this out lol

There are many reasons that Tumblr discourse has gotten so toxic. For one, when you put a bunch of teenagers in a high stress environment, especially mentally ill teenagers and teenagers who are survivors of abuse and trauma, it's a breeding ground both for toxicity and for pain. Because social justice/discourse Tumblr attracts users with rough backgrounds or marginalized identities, it's easy to band together against and bond over common oppressors. These things can cause several issues.

Tumblr has a terrible habit of weaponizing identities. By that I mean discoursers will use their marginalized identities to win arguments without providing other evidence or good arguments.

Take the following argument for example:

Q: Is the word “homosexual” problematic when talking about gay men?

Gay man 1: “Yes, it is.”

Gay man 2: “No, it isn't!”

Okay, so now what do you do? You're used to believing people based solely off of their identities, but what happens when they disagree?

The issue with holding marginalized people as experts in nuanced issues is that marginalized identities are NOT monolithic. People can be prejudiced, bigoted, rude, or purposefully deceitful regardless of identity. People can also be extremely kind and intelligent with different backgrounds and lived experience, with some ignorance and mistakes, with personal preferences. Obviously, if you hear overwhelmingly that something is problematic from that group of people (e.g, is it okay to misgender trans people, the answer being no), then you should take care to listen and take them at their word. Some arguments are more complicated and require deeper analysis, so let's return to the argument before.

Q: Is the word “homosexual” problematic when talking about gay men?

Gay Man 1: “Yes, it is. It recalls the medicalization of gay men and our subsequent mistreatment and dehumanization. With the split attraction model, the word also has a new meaning, so it can be confusing in conversations. Many gay men consider the word to be a slur and don't want to hear it.”

Gay Man 2: “No, it isn't! As a gay man, ‘gay’ has become an umbrella term for anyone who experiences same-gender attraction. If we don’t use that word, how will people be able to talk about us, and how will we be able to talk about ourselves? Because of some events in my life, I'm uncomfortable with other people calling me ‘gay’ but I've never been uncomfortable with ‘homosexual.’ “

Okay, so you heard an argument this time. So, what's the right answer? Isn't that what is important?

It's not that simple. One issue with discourse on Tumblr is its inability to handle nuance. Who GETS to decide what's right? Sure, we can figure out bits and pieces. For example, you should know it's inappropriate to call the first man a homosexual because he's said it makes him uncomfortable. We know we shouldn't make the second man accept the label “gay” if it hurts him.

So again, who's right?

I can't tell you that. I could only ever tell you my opinion. I can tell you that for me, personally, I like to err on the side of caution.

Tumblr is unwilling to treat issues as living, changing, perhaps unanswerable entities. The need to have a black and white answer on everything is alienating people and making discourse a fruitless endeavour. Instead of fighting to prove why we’re right, or fighting to get an answer, we should be working together towards a common goal of educating each other and ourselves and allowing ourselves to be compassionate and imperfect creatures.

How do we educate each other? I promise that treating people with innocent, if misguided, questions isn't it. We have to let people be curious and make mistakes and know that we won't demonize them for dissent or for messing up. I believe that open, honest, and genuine discourse will naturally teach well.

Again, I would like to stress that there is a difference between situational ignorance and a person consistently unwilling to better themself.

The weaponization of identity isn't the only issue with some of the language of our discourse. I also want to talk about the difference between systematic oppression and discrimination and how Tumblr handles it.

With marginalized identities, there is very often oppression. This word gets thrown around a lot, especially with respect to ace discourse. So what does it mean?

Systematic oppression is the institutional or legislative and almost always cultural manifestation of disenfranchisement coupled with a power dynamic that inhibits social mobility.

Some examples of people who are systematically oppressed (at least in America, but due to imperialism and the like, the effects are usually global) are black people, women, and people who experience same-gender attraction. I'm going to talk about the experience of systematic oppression vs discrimination for the third case, just a little bit. Obviously, these issues are extremely complex and I won't be able to explain every facet, but I can give a rough sketch.

For the sakes of simplicity and consistency, I would like to talk about two groups of people: gay men and bisexual men. Both groups of people experience same-gender attraction, and both are oppressed under homophobia.

Hold on, did OP just say that bi people are oppressed under homophobia? WHAT ABOUT BIPHOBIA???

Okay! This is a common misconception on Tumblr. Homophobia is systematic because it is legal, institutional, very cultural, and involves a power imbalance between those who experience SGA and those who do not.

Biphobia is NOT a form of systematic oppression, and I'm happy to explain why in another post, but not here. This is already too long.

Does that mean that gay men can't discriminate against bi men? No.

Does THAT mean that bi men can't discriminate against gay men? No.

Any aggression that occurs between two people who are oppressed under the same systematic force can be classified as “lateral aggression.” Lateral aggression is damaging, insidious, pointless, and divisive.

There are cultural components that privilege bi men over gay men, and there are cultural components that privilege gay men over bi men, but in society, there is no power imbalance between the two.

Bi men can be extremely homophobic to gay men, and gay men can be extremely biphobic to gay men, BOTH to the point where it could ruin someone’s life.

I said all of this to lead up to my very important point: the validation of discrimination.

I've been on Tumblr for 4 years, and in my opinion, Tumblr mainly cares about oppressed identities or notions that can be wrapped up nicely in little bows.

But I want to make very, very clear that having more marginalized identities than another person does not make you better, smarter, more correct, or mean their struggles are more valid than yours.

Some of the worst things that have happened in my life are because of things that don’t get me ~Internet points,~ like the fact I was raised in a Mormon household, the fact I'm not conventionally attractive, the fact I grew up in a conservative area.

The discrimination and heartache I have faced for things like these are arguably worse, or at least comparable, to the discrimination I've faced for being a gay man.

I feel that a lot of what's wrong with discourse is that people feel like if their heartache doesn't come from being systematically oppressed or from trauma/abuse, then it's not equal or that it's not valid. This is ABSOLUTELY false.

If we are going to be successful discoursers and make progress and better ourselves, we have to let go of our strange fetishization of identity. We have to stop the idea that there is any cohesive, monolithic experience or perspective from any group of people. We have to validate discrimination and the effect it has on people.

Failing to do this alienates people and makes it harder for all of us to become knowledgeable and kind.

We HAVE to kill the idea that someone making a mistake or holding a mildly problematic belief makes them irredeemable. We HAVE to treat arguments as individual and not necessarily as mindless parts of a larger whole. We HAVE to accept that we are imperfect, dynamic, and human. We are not arbiters of judgment or masters of morality. We are a group of people who have come together with the common goals of building community and working to better the experiences of disadvantaged people.

I recognize the need to be wary of patterns and harmful rhetoric, and I understand (and condone) retaliation against oppressors and unnecessary cruelty. This post is NOT here to excuse repugnant behavior and beliefs.

We have to treat each person we come across in the discourse not as the sum (or worse, the poster child) of their identities, experiences, and beliefs, but rather as intersectionally gestalt, multi-faceted, capable of compassion and love, imperfect, and with a boundless potential to improve themself.

It's easy to start a witch hunt on someone who made a poorly worded post or who made a mistake, and sometimes such an extreme reaction is justifiable, even necessary. But again, think about why--is it the allure of seeming more enlightened? Is it blindly following someone you admire? Is it out of spite and cruelty? Is it because you want to win? Or is it out of a genuine desire to keep people safe and to help others learn?

I understand that we are imperfect and sometimes hedonistic or primal in our intentions, and I know that perfection is impossible. I know for a fact I am guilty of many of the shortcomings I highlighted in this post.

Good discoursers have to know that being incorrect is inevitable. There is no such thing as perfect discourse, and mistakes should be expected. The discourser who sees themself as infallible is the discourser to be wary of.

We aren’t machines. We’re people.

For Trans People in the Service Industry, Discrimination Is an Unfortunate Reality of the Job added to Google Docs

For Trans People in the Service Industry, Discrimination Is an Unfortunate Reality of the Job

 Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

A Supreme Court ruling makes it illegal to discriminate against an employee based on sexual orientation or gender, but that barely begins to address the unique pressures and harassment faced by trans service workers

On June 15, in a historic case, the Supreme Court held that federal law forbids discriminating against an employee solely because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Such an action would be considered discrimination under Title VII, as “an employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” writes Justice Neil Gorsuch. In other words, a workplace couldn’t legally fire a man for having a husband because it wouldn’t fire a woman for having a husband. If “the employer intentionally penalizes a person identified as male at birth for traits or actions that it tolerates in an employee identified as female at birth,” it’s discrimination “because of … sex.”

Much of the praise for the ruling comes from the fact that it’s been a long time coming. Until now, it’s been legal in more than half of U.S. states to fire someone for being gay, bisexual, or trans, even though it’s clearly a discriminatory practice. “The Supreme Court’s decision provides the nation with great news during a time when it is sorely needed. To hear the highest court in the land say LGBTQ people are, and should be, protected from discrimination under federal law is a historic moment,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, in a statement. However, she notes, “we still have more work to do to ensure that transgender people can fully live their lives without fear of discrimination for being who they are.”

The food service industry has often been a place for society’s “outcasts,” including LGBTQ people, to find acceptance and community. But while this ruling is a win for LGBTQ rights in general, trans and nonbinary people in the food service industry are questioning how much of an effect it’ll have on everyday life — and imagining what could be done to effect tangible change.

Niko Prytula, a nonbinary person who lives in Virginia, only recently stopped working in food service after eight years, most recently at a fine dining establishment with extremely formal practices. At most of their jobs, they were never open about their gender identity. “I was always out as queer, and there were not that many places where I was the only queer person on staff,” they say, “but when I was working fine dining, that was the first time where it felt like it would be a genuine obstacle to be out.”

Most of that was not because of the risk of discrimination from management, but rather from customers. Prytula recalls the extraordinarily gendered style of service, which required serving the oldest woman at the table first, referring to coworkers and patrons as “Mister” or “Miss,” and serving mostly older, white customers. “I do think [coming out] would have just made things very complicated,” they say. “I feel like it would have required me to create almost like a flowchart for my coworkers of like, ‘Okay, so I want you guys to use the correct pronouns for me, but you can let the tables misgender me all they want, because I don’t want to get in an argument with some elderly person when it’s literally a matter of my income.’”

Lucky Michaels, a trans rights activist and bartender at Storico at the New York Historical Society, says “as a trans person, job security is huge.” Michaels, a nonbinary trans woman, has been working in hospitality since the late ’90s, and says that because of the need for job security, “most of the trans people that I find [in the industry] are absolutely in the closet, stealth because it’s a really toxic work environment for people in general.” It’s not just discrimination from customers; it’s also the hypermasculine kitchen culture that persists in restaurants to this day.

Having a job is a high bar to clear for many trans people, says Michaels. “If you don’t have a house to go home to, or a place to change your clothes and shower or eat, how are you going to be able to get or sustain a job in the first place?” While the risk of losing a job is worrisome for everyone, unemployment, homelessness, and food insecurity are things that affect trans people more across the board. According to an April 2020 report from the Williams Institute looking at pre-pandemic numbers, “78.1 percent of trans adults are in the workforce, 12.8 percent of whom are unemployed, translating to an estimated 139,700 trans people unemployed (and looking for work) nationwide. In comparison, between 3.9 percent and 4.9 percent of U.S. adults in the labor force are unemployed.”

However, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated those numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the unemployment rate at 13.3 percent for May. And according to the Human Rights Campaign, trans people have been more likely to have lost their jobs during the pandemic and economic crisis: “19 percent of transgender people and 26 percent of transgender people of color have become unemployed due to COVID-19, compared to 17 percent of LGBTQ people and 12 percent of the general population.” The numbers are particularly bad for the food industry. The BLS reports that an additional 1.2 million jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector were lost in May, on top of the 7.4 million lost in April. And HRC reports that LGBTQ people are more likely to work in industries affected by COVID-19, including 2 million (15 percent) who work in restaurants and food services.

The SCOTUS decision sets a precedent, both legal and social, and signals to employers that there are bigger consequences for discrimination, but bigoted employers will always find other ways to alienate and push out trans employees. (The ruling does not apply to contractors, like most delivery drivers or Instacart shoppers.) Both Prytula and Michaels note how rare it would be to have “evidence” of a boss firing someone because they are trans. “I can’t tell you the number of times that people have tried to get rid of me because I’m trans without saying, ‘This is because you’re trans,’” says Michaels. “I’ve had managers and chefs try to get me to quit or leave, that have thrown around really horrible language. They’ll be using ‘faggot,’ I’ll be barred from the restroom of my gender identity, they give you inappropriate schedules, they give you inappropriate uniforms.”

The nature of the ruling also just doesn’t apply when much of working in the food service industry involves interacting with customers, who are essentially your bosses for 90 minutes at a time and are under no legal requirement to treat you fairly. “If you’re no longer allowed to be fired for being queer, but your income depends on whether or not guests find you palatable, or performing the right way, or, god help you, attractive, it doesn’t really help that much,” says Prytula.

Then there’s the issue of at-will employment. If you work without a union that has argued for just-cause termination, in most states, your boss can fire you without reason anyway. “Often the unique circumstances and additional burdens queer, and especially trans folks live with can make them more susceptible to ‘fireable offenses,’” says V Spehar, a nonbinary person who has worked in the hospitality industry for years, and who most recently was the Director of Impact at the James Beard Foundation, focusing on Women’s Leadership & LGBTQ programs. “Being late, having to grin and bear rude customers’ comments, lack of emotional or mental support, lack of secure housing or familial support” are all reasons that an employee could be seen as “not the right fit.”

On an encouraging note, there are other legislative pushes that, while helping all workers, could protect trans people specifically. Prytula says doing away with tipped minimum wage would mean trans food service workers would be more likely to earn a living wage without monitoring their appearance for the sake of transphobic customers. Doing away with at-will employment could do a lot too, as Sarah Jones writes for New York Magazine, as trying to sue your former employers for trans discrimination “can burden workers who don’t have the independent means to hold their former employers accountable.”

Spehar also says more change needs to come from within the industry, and not only from outside legislation. “Without creating a culture of understanding for the out-of-work burdens that disproportionately affect the LGBTQ community, we are all still held to the same ‘professional’ standards and expectations created by cis white culture,” they say. That means restaurant owners and nonprofits prioritizing anti-bias training, putting resources toward helping queer and trans people open their own businesses, and centering the fact that the food industry “is built foundationally on black, queer, women’s, and immigrant’s labor.” And making sure these issues take priority outside of Pride month, when many businesses use the LGBTQ community for marketing gimmicks.

Michaels still sees the food service industry as a place where trans people can thrive. She notes that James Beard was an out gay man at a time when that wasn’t widely accepted, and how restaurants and bars, especially Black- and women-owned restaurants and organizations, are committing themselves to diversity, equity, and inclusion work. But she also notes there’s a bigger picture outside the rights of those who find employment. “I don’t know that it is in legislation,” says Michaels. The SCOTUS ruling is an important piece in the massive, and mostly incomplete, puzzle of legislation and activism that’s needed to truly secure equitable treatment for trans people. “Legislation, as we’ve seen, can be fickle, and driven by administration, politicized,” says Spehar, “and in the end will never do what humanity and compassion from the industry can do.”

via Eater - All https://www.eater.com/2020/6/29/21304536/trans-workers-struggle-with-discrimination-scotus-ruling

Created June 30, 2020 at 03:26AM /huong sen View Google Doc Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xa6sRugRZk4MDSyctcqusGYBv1lXYkrF

Things I believe in

Ghosts Magic An all-powerful and omnipotent deity The right to religious freedom for all people, nations and parties (I celebrate the Jewish, Muslim, and Pagan communities, for example! I love you guys!) Reading good books (I really love fiction….? Wilkie Collins, Makepeace Thackeray, Deborah Harkness, Holly Black, Diana Galbadon, Jim Butcher, and so many more) That there is absolutely NO form of acceptable assault – not only in the stereotypical ‘lone woman in an alley’ form (don’t get me wrong! That is awful!), but also the casual kind: mocking a Trans individual at a bar, touching African American women’s hair and calling it ‘soft’ (tip: its fucking hair??? What were you expecting???), yelling slurs at a Muslim man in the street, etc. [I use ‘African American’ because I happen to live in America; no offense intended to African-Europeans etc. I don’t mean to imply, either, that some forms of assault are worse than others] Kittens are pretty adorable Treating members of the service community like garbage is unacceptable; they are human beings and they are providing a necessary service to society 1. Racism is very real and it definitely still exists – if you say otherwise, you are part of the problem, whether that denial is born of ignorance, stubbornness, or actual bigoted behavior(s) 2. Misogyny is very real, and it definitely still exists 3. White men DO have privilege – so do white women, if not in the same way 4. Rape Culture is a very real thing 5. Sexism is a very real thing 6. Hate Crimes are a very real thing 7. Male sexual assault is a very real thing If you denied 1-7, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM. I’m white as you can get, and it’s only by paying attention to the people around me that I’m slowly realizing this. Staying silent is staying ignorant; I want to learn. If I ever say something that offends you, please let me know. Social mores and/or other accepted behavior, if it leads to stereotyping and stigmas, should not be tolerated. Special star to assuming African Americans are criminals/poor and insulting the mentally handicapped – those just happen to be common in the city where I live, which is why I bring them up. Assumptions, when proven incorrect, should be let go. People can lose arguments, but few will admit it – that is a problem. You need to know when you are wrong, because there’s so much more to life than being right. Part of that is growth. If you do win an argument, accept it with grace. Let people finish their freaking sentences!! If you only heard 2/3s of my sentence and you tell me I’m wrong, you thought it before I opened my mouth. Big problem. Gentlemen, I am thinking especially of you…. It’s a thing. If you don’t believe me, I ask that you go to a public space and pay attention to a conversation with men and women. Notice how often the women get to finish their sentences. It’s even worse in work places. Feminism doesn’t mean hating men (though, like any social group, there are extremists who may promote such inexcusable behavior), but rather an equality for all gender groups [the well-known comparison is men and women] Prejudice is unacceptable: against people with mental illness, against people with tattoos/facial piercings, telling all young people they should just accept things, telling all elderly folks that they’re all the same…. Things like that. They’re born of learned behavior. You should know better. Challenge what you see, people, or you become part of the problem. Finger-pointing solves nothing, no matter how tempting it may actually be – try statements like ‘I am part of the problem’ rather than ‘Well, if you >[political party slurs]< hadn’t >thing<…!’ Bees deserve our protection, and they’re being ignored. Some, if not most, of the media walks a very perilous line. I won’t use the word “corrupt”, but I will say there are very potent holes in some stories, and that their attempts at editing content/story picking definitely upsets me. (This is only from my experience; I don’t mean to vilify anyone.) Unlike people who falsely offer aid and support, I mean it when I tell people my door is open. I want to listen to you. I do want to help. Message me, anonymously if you must. Not only for emotional conflictions, either. Feeling lonely, guilty, angry or sad? Struggling with self-harm? Working on a new book? Did you finish a bomb-ass painting? Did you get cast in a play? Hear a funny joke? I want to hear from you. I would legitimately, absolutely, love to hear from you. Please, please hit me up. I’m not a doctor, true…. But you are not alone. Minimum wage is not livable. If you live on MW, you are not living in most cases, but simply enduring. I make 12.00/h (when MW is 7.25/h), and I’m barely getting by right now. (I’m also supporting two people and paying more than half of the bills, as well as most of our share of rent)(Just to put that in perspective for you) It’s okay to have unpopular opinions. Just… pay attention that you don’t let that unpopular opinion warp you into a nasty person. Seriously, it’s a hard thing; I’m just learning it myself. Standing Rock did not deserve to be manipulated like it was, and this pipeline is an inexcusable and poor choice. Mental illness is hard to live with, but harder to live with if you don’t take care of it properly. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have emotional support or the odd mental health day, but I am saying that you still have to take accountability for your behavior. Americans should have free healthcare, and, unless we can get Democrats and Republicans to work together, we aren’t going to get it. I’m also going to throw in that the COST of most medications and doctor visits is ASTRONOMICALLY overpriced. Shame on you; I shouldn’t have to skip meals to see my doctor. College should be free. It is an achievable goal, but it has been swallowed and stomped on – mostly by sheer human greed. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. If you don’t want to do something, don’t agree to do it. It isn’t only yourself that you hurt by failing to do these things. Basic propriety is, sadly, going to hell – I very rarely hear ‘thank you’, or ‘you’re welcome’, or ‘good morning’. Guys…. This stuff is important. So important… and if we don’t start showing each other respect, it’s only going to get worse. Women’s bodies should not be controlled by men’s votes. (Say it with me: PLANNED PARENTHOOD DOES SO MUCH MORE THAN ABORTIONS!!!) Further, women do have a right to an abortion. There is not an equal distribution of wealth in this country. Men and women who have great money… don’t share it. They can drive a car worth more than I make in a year, but some don’t know the names of their butlers, don’t care if they take care of their employees. That is a problem. That is what leads to revolutions –and that’s where our country is slowly heading. If you use racial slurs or hate speech, I consider you a horrible person. There is no such thing as a funny joke that marginalizes a sex, gender, race or religion. If you abuse children, your partner, animals, or anyone else, I also consider you a horrible person. If you use your religion, whatever that might be, to excuse telling other people they are unworthy/they are going to Hell, I consider you a horrible person. Protesters do not deserve to be shot or run down in the streets. However, Protesters should not be destroying public property. Irresponsible and stupid behavior such as this actually harms the validity behind the cause you’re choosing to fight for, and you should expect more from yourselves. Only cowards run away from an argument – especially if they recognize they cannot win it. Whether or not you are vegan or vegetarian, respect the rights of others to choose. By all means, offer the relevant information if it comes up… but vilifying people, judging people, is not your job. It is not my job. Being disrespectful doesn’t make you edgy. It makes you look graceless and weak, to say nothing of the wincing we do as you slowly lose your dignity. Know better. Not everyone is trying to attack you. If they are, you prove them right with such behavior and I am very disappointed in you. Questioning a group is one thing. Calling them all corrupt is another entirely – this does not only include groups who suffer from hate, but also things like the US Government.

On “Hamilton,” Brexit, and Irish Independence

In June 2016, my wife and I headed to Ireland for a week-long vacation. It was my first time on Emerald soil, despite my unabashed affection for my cultural heritage. While I certainly wish I’d had the chance to visit earlier, there was also something poetic about making the trip during the centennial celebration of the Easter Rising, the first major conflict in the struggle for Irish Independence.

For those who don’t know their Irish history, the Easter Rising was actually kind of a massive failure. But that horrible defeat is also what made the rest of the soon-to-be-Republic wake up and realize that their sovereignty was no longer optional. In a way, it was also the beginning of the end of the British Empire — Ireland was the first major colony since the United States to fight for its freedom, and over the next half-century or so, the crown would its relinquish its rule on pretty much everywhere else.

(Admittedly, Ireland is still not entirely free, but that’s a whole other complicated topic. Tiocfaidh ár lá, as they say.)

My wife and I did not intentionally plan our trip around this centennial celebration, but it did add a certain heft of historical importance to the whole thing.

On that same note, we didn’t expect to hop on a plane to Ireland the day after the Brexit vote, either.

Ireland is now comfortably a part of the European Union, of course, so Brexit didn’t impact most of the people we met on our journey across the southern half of the island; indeed, most of them heard our American accents and immediately asked, “Are yourselves from the States? Sure, sure. What the fuck is up with Donald Trump?” to which we both replied with eyerolls, shrugs, sighs, and “I’m gonna need another pint for this.”

But the talk radio and newspaper headlines told a different story: Brexit had the potential to radically change the relationship between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, since they share the only physical land border between the UK and the EU. See, while the fight for Irish Independence began in 1916, the battle wasn’t over until 1923, and the conflict between the the Republic and the British-controlled North raged through 90s (though there are some who are still fighting war today). The border there was heavily militarized until 1998, when the Good Fridayagreement was signed, marking an endpoint to a long and complicated peace process —in which, coincidentally, the Clintons played a small but not unsubstantial role.

Also coincidentally, that trip to Ireland was the first time I listened to “Hamilton.”

We spent 2+ hours in the car every day, alternating between “Hamilton” and The Pogues because relationships are built on compromise (but it was mostly “Hamilton” because I understand and accept that Shane MacGowan’s toothless drunken ramblings don’t appeal to everyone in the same way).

Between “Hamilton,” Brexit, the Easter Rising centennial, and all of the other stunning history we saw as we made our way across the Irish countryside, this got me thinking about politics and revolution, and the roots of where we today—which of course is the kind of stuff I tend to think about anyway, but especially as we enter the third month of Donald Trump’s presidency and celebrate Irish heritage along with St. Pádraig’s Day here in the United States.

As someone who has spent their life in liberal New England, “State’s Rights” had always seemed like something the South made up in order to pretend the Civil War wasn’t about slavery (it was).

More recently, “state’s rights” have been used to block any efforts to curb gun violence, and also to punish trans* people for having to poop (yet somehow not weed?). But listening to the story of our nation’s founding as so eloquently rapped by Lin-Manuel Miranda while driving around Ireland, I came to realize that perhaps the original intention of “state’s rights” was to essentially create 13 separate countries on American soil that had pre-established trade, border, and immigration agreements.

In that context, states like Massachusetts and North Carolina could be as radically different as Germany and France, each with their own unique culture and language or dialect. State identity would not just be an arbitrary moniker; Rhode Islanders and Virginians would almost be separate nationalities, with their shared label of “American” being almost as vague and non-committal as it is on, well, any other continent. The United States would be less of a “country,” in the sense that we know it now, and more of an economic union.

The US then would have been what the EU is today.

An EU citizen can live, work, or travel in any EU nation. They share the same currency, and observe the same charter of fundamental human rights, but other than that, each country is pretty much free to do what it’s going to do, with culture and traditions and other specifics of living that remain unique to them and them alone.

That’s pretty much what Thomas Jefferson argues for in “Hamilton” when the eponymous immigrant first tries to establish the national bank. But it’s not at all what happened — for better, or for worse. Our governors today are not at all comparable to European Presidents, and the power that is currently yielded by Donald Trump is vastly different from Donald Tusk’s authority and influence.

The question of state’s rights could have changed our trajectory 250 years ago. But that didn’t happen.

If the United States had actually been setup to recognize the cultural autonomy of each individual nation-state, we probably wouldn’t be where we are today. We probably wouldn’t have grown as fast as we did (also for better or for worse; remember, our early growth and success was also intrinsically tied to slavery), and the distribution of our wealth and economy would be even more radical than it is right now, reshaping the domino chain of events that we currently know to be the foundational moments in the story of our nation.

Because of this, it’s almost impossible to imagine what this alternate history version of the US would be like today, with 50 separate nation-states working together while also forging their own paths (assuming that we still “collected” those nation-states the way we’ve done with our current spread of states, which may or may not have happened).

And that’s the thing: that divisive tension of potentially-50 different countries, and the fractured state of our collective national identity, are intrinsic parts of America. When Trump supporters opine that we need to “come together as country,” they’re willfully ignoring the fact that we’ve never been together as a country. And that fact has shaped everything about the United States. (To be fair, Trump supporters tend to willfully ignore all facts in general. Ba-dum-tisch!)

How much time, energy, and resources have we spent trying to define and lock down a singular vision of “America the Beautiful Abstract Concept?”

Guns. Religion. Marriage equality. Whiteness and race in general. Immigration, and the overall influx of Spanish language and culture. Taxes. Welfare. Healthcare. Crime, Free Speech, and Policing. Education and “choice.” Basic science. Environmental issues. Land rights. Public or private services? Innovation! Are we a society that looks out for each other, and the individual choice embodiment of everyman-for-himself? Do laws exist to protect the people, or to serve businesses? What would my personal sense of abstract identity be then, as a Nutmegger by birth and a Masshole by choice (and soon-to-be-New Yorker)?

American identity is intrinsically fractured, because it’s always been fractured, because that’s how our country was formed, regardless of the original intention. By this point, we’re too large and unwieldy to steer ourselves smoothly as we bumble towards the future. And so these divisive socio-political issues are trapped in a constant state of tug-of-war, and it’s only made worse by the fact that our cultural obsession with binary thinking (perhaps the only thing we’re unified on) has forced us all to conform to one choice, or the other, jerking back and forth forever. Whichever side you’re on is socially expected to dictate your concept of American identity for you.

There are two ironies to this situation that both stand to sting the most adamant Trump supporters:

According to that traditionally reductive left-right spectrum of America, liberals are the ones who are supposed to favor centralized or “big” government. This is demonstrably untrue, but I digress. Because now under President 45, Blue States are finally reaping the residual benefits of the same state’s rights that we once found futile, for perhaps the first significant time in US history.

I’m still not sure how I feel about that, though it certainly makes me appreciate the Devil’s Advocate arguments I’d been hearing from my Libertarian friends for years. For the most part, I’ve always thought that those who most adamantly insist on flying the standard of “state’s rights” were fighting a losing battle, and only ever using it to hold onto power. I certainly don’t think US states will ever enjoy the same autonomy as the countries of the European Union; but I still think it’s something worth noticing, and thinking about.

The other irony is of course the overlap of Brexit and Trump campaign in their shared appeals to economic strife and xenophobic philosophy. Despite the fact that the British Empire literally ruled the majority of the world—and thus, that any immigration or cultural mix that they might be facing in the UK is their own doing—Nigel Farage and company were somehow still able to convince people that the European Union (and by extension, all countries outside of the British Isles) were bad, evil things.

Trumpers share a disdain with their Brexit Brethren for “The Establishment” and “New World Order,” as embodied by NATO, I guess, and the UN as a whole (and also Muslims, and false flag psyops, or something). And yet, for Trumpers, particularly in the South and Midwest, the autonomy of the European Union actually represents everything they’d supposedly desired for years: cultural autonomy. Except that the EU also expects all of its member-nations to uphold the same respectful standards of equality for all people regardless of race, religion, gender, creed, or sexual orientation—which, sadly, is not an agreement that half the US would be willing to uphold.

This is not to say that all Trumpers and Brexiteers are homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, misogynistic jerks, of course; just that the politicians at the forefront of their respective campaigns capitalized on these qualities and fears, and that even in the absence of any conscious intent of discrimination, it’s not hard to follow the path from all their other rhetorical arguments and end up right smack in the middle of Bigotry Road.

(Best case scenario, it was an appeal to their basest, animalistic instincts to preserve the self at the sake of others, and they all fell for it.)

And that brings me back to 1916 Ireland.

Pádraig Pearse was among the men who fought and died in the Easter Rising. He was a poet and a thinker, who believed in democratic socialism and feminism, and who struggled to retain his indigenous tongue in the face of colonial oppression.

He also had a gun. (It didn’t help him, but still.)

Hamilton had a gun, too. So did George Washington. Hercules Mulligan had pants and some dopeass rhymes, and presumably a gun as well.

As we drove through Ireland last June, I was reminded of how these revolutionary leaders were all philosophers, sensitive souls who still fought physically for freedom because they saw it as their only choice. It’s not unlike the great Sioux leaders such as Sitting Bull, who walked with a chanunpa in one hand and a skullcracker in the other, always offering the peace pipe first, but keeping his club handy, just in case.

And yet, in the modern day United States, guns and militarization have been almost exclusively associated with right-wing culture and violent white extremism…until now.

Suddenly we’re debating whether it’s okay to punch Nazis. Antifa is starting to get the same news coverage as the alt-right, and gun sales are up among liberal women and minorities, but down across the rest of the country (it’s almost like…all those right-wing gun sales were previously driven by irrational fears of crime and racial paranoia?).

Now the same people who used to tout their Second Amendment rights are more upset about property damage than human rights violations. Now they’re willing to outlaw the rights of the people to assemble and subject citizens to arbitrary purity tests before those same people are allowed to defend themselves from violence, all because they think it helps to uphold some semblance of “order”—or at least, order as it serves them.

The implicit message here is that our American exceptionalism is the central rule of the land.

It’s as if to say that the fight for Civil Rights was won some 50 years ago, and now things are totally different and will still that way forever so every historical example of self-defense or armed insurgence is irrelevant. It’s okay for “real” Americans to stand their ground, but everyone else is just disrupting the “natural” order of things, just like they have at every other point in history.

Except that sense of status quo order has only ever worked to keep a chosen few people in power. Or, as Sinclair Lewis once prophetically said, “It can’t happen here.”

But it can happen here. The only thing exceptional about America is that it hasn’t happened recently in our collective cultural memory.

Europeans understand the serious dangers of fascism, violence, and war, because they’re constantly surrounded by reminders of its horrors. In the United States, anything that predates World War II is practically ancient history. Our American grandparents went off to fight in Europe, then came back to unprecedented levels of prosperity—because Europe was ravaged, and not for the first time, either. By the time the US was born, most European countries had seen their centuries-old landmarks ransacked and destroyed several times over.

Barring a few horrifically tragic but isolated attacks, the US has not.

So what seems so distant to us is a natural part of their lives. The ruined remnants of feudal castles dot the Irish landscape with little preservation or oversight, for example; the woman we stayed with outside of Dublin had a grandfather who was killed in the Easter Rising, and kept a photo of him hanging over the stairs next to a copy of Forógra na Poblachta.

Sure, we have American Civil War re-enactors. But that’s all about false sense of nostalgia (a distinctly American psychosis, to be sure). In Europe, on the other hand, the wounds are genuinely more fresh, the historical damage all within eyesight.

Yet for some reason, here in the States, we think history is settled; that any seemingly-important moment will be remembered and preserved forever, even though we can barely remember what happened when our parents were teenagers. Our political system is great and all, but that doesn’t make it the One True Way that perseveres without question or conflict.

The only thing exceptional about America is our size, and that we’ve had the same identity crisis for 250 years, taking two steps forward and one step back.

Our insistence on being so “exceptional”—on being naive enough to think that we’ve somehow evolved to the point that we’re immune to the same failings of every empire and revolution that came before—is exactly what prevents us from seeing the patterns of history staring back at us.

But “The past isn’t past; it isn’t even over;” “As above, so below;” “This has all happened before;” et cetera, et cetera. Basically this is all a long-winded way of quoting a 30-year old Billy Bragg song:

“The cities of Europe have burned before, and they may yet burn again. But if they do, I hope you’ll understand that Washington will burn with them; Omaha will burn with them; Los Alamos will burn with them.”

None of this is to say that I’m condoning (or condemning) insurrection of any kind. This is all just to say that we should not ignore history.

Let us not conserve or recreate the past, but learn from its lessons, and expect that we’re all inclined to fall back into its worst patterns — then do everything we can to make sure we don’t make those mistakes.

Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images A Supreme Court ruling makes it illegal to discriminate against an employee based on sexual orientation or gender, but that barely begins to address the unique pressures and harassment faced by trans service workers On June 15, in a historic case, the Supreme Court held that federal law forbids discriminating against an employee solely because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Such an action would be considered discrimination under Title VII, as “an employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” writes Justice Neil Gorsuch. In other words, a workplace couldn’t legally fire a man for having a husband because it wouldn’t fire a woman for having a husband. If “the employer intentionally penalizes a person identified as male at birth for traits or actions that it tolerates in an employee identified as female at birth,” it’s discrimination “because of … sex.” Much of the praise for the ruling comes from the fact that it’s been a long time coming. Until now, it’s been legal in more than half of U.S. states to fire someone for being gay, bisexual, or trans, even though it’s clearly a discriminatory practice. “The Supreme Court’s decision provides the nation with great news during a time when it is sorely needed. To hear the highest court in the land say LGBTQ people are, and should be, protected from discrimination under federal law is a historic moment,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, in a statement. However, she notes, “we still have more work to do to ensure that transgender people can fully live their lives without fear of discrimination for being who they are.” The food service industry has often been a place for society’s “outcasts,” including LGBTQ people, to find acceptance and community. But while this ruling is a win for LGBTQ rights in general, trans and nonbinary people in the food service industry are questioning how much of an effect it’ll have on everyday life — and imagining what could be done to effect tangible change. Niko Prytula, a nonbinary person who lives in Virginia, only recently stopped working in food service after eight years, most recently at a fine dining establishment with extremely formal practices. At most of their jobs, they were never open about their gender identity. “I was always out as queer, and there were not that many places where I was the only queer person on staff,” they say, “but when I was working fine dining, that was the first time where it felt like it would be a genuine obstacle to be out.” Most of that was not because of the risk of discrimination from management, but rather from customers. Prytula recalls the extraordinarily gendered style of service, which required serving the oldest woman at the table first, referring to coworkers and patrons as “Mister” or “Miss,” and serving mostly older, white customers. “I do think [coming out] would have just made things very complicated,” they say. “I feel like it would have required me to create almost like a flowchart for my coworkers of like, ‘Okay, so I want you guys to use the correct pronouns for me, but you can let the tables misgender me all they want, because I don’t want to get in an argument with some elderly person when it’s literally a matter of my income.’” Lucky Michaels, a trans rights activist and bartender at Storico at the New York Historical Society, says “as a trans person, job security is huge.” Michaels, a nonbinary trans woman, has been working in hospitality since the late ’90s, and says that because of the need for job security, “most of the trans people that I find [in the industry] are absolutely in the closet, stealth because it’s a really toxic work environment for people in general.” It’s not just discrimination from customers; it’s also the hypermasculine kitchen culture that persists in restaurants to this day. Having a job is a high bar to clear for many trans people, says Michaels. “If you don’t have a house to go home to, or a place to change your clothes and shower or eat, how are you going to be able to get or sustain a job in the first place?” While the risk of losing a job is worrisome for everyone, unemployment, homelessness, and food insecurity are things that affect trans people more across the board. According to an April 2020 report from the Williams Institute looking at pre-pandemic numbers, “78.1 percent of trans adults are in the workforce, 12.8 percent of whom are unemployed, translating to an estimated 139,700 trans people unemployed (and looking for work) nationwide. In comparison, between 3.9 percent and 4.9 percent of U.S. adults in the labor force are unemployed.” However, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated those numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the unemployment rate at 13.3 percent for May. And according to the Human Rights Campaign, trans people have been more likely to have lost their jobs during the pandemic and economic crisis: “19 percent of transgender people and 26 percent of transgender people of color have become unemployed due to COVID-19, compared to 17 percent of LGBTQ people and 12 percent of the general population.” The numbers are particularly bad for the food industry. The BLS reports that an additional 1.2 million jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector were lost in May, on top of the 7.4 million lost in April. And HRC reports that LGBTQ people are more likely to work in industries affected by COVID-19, including 2 million (15 percent) who work in restaurants and food services. The SCOTUS decision sets a precedent, both legal and social, and signals to employers that there are bigger consequences for discrimination, but bigoted employers will always find other ways to alienate and push out trans employees. (The ruling does not apply to contractors, like most delivery drivers or Instacart shoppers.) Both Prytula and Michaels note how rare it would be to have “evidence” of a boss firing someone because they are trans. “I can’t tell you the number of times that people have tried to get rid of me because I’m trans without saying, ‘This is because you’re trans,’” says Michaels. “I’ve had managers and chefs try to get me to quit or leave, that have thrown around really horrible language. They’ll be using ‘faggot,’ I’ll be barred from the restroom of my gender identity, they give you inappropriate schedules, they give you inappropriate uniforms.” The nature of the ruling also just doesn’t apply when much of working in the food service industry involves interacting with customers, who are essentially your bosses for 90 minutes at a time and are under no legal requirement to treat you fairly. “If you’re no longer allowed to be fired for being queer, but your income depends on whether or not guests find you palatable, or performing the right way, or, god help you, attractive, it doesn’t really help that much,” says Prytula. Then there’s the issue of at-will employment. If you work without a union that has argued for just-cause termination, in most states, your boss can fire you without reason anyway. “Often the unique circumstances and additional burdens queer, and especially trans folks live with can make them more susceptible to ‘fireable offenses,’” says V Spehar, a nonbinary person who has worked in the hospitality industry for years, and who most recently was the Director of Impact at the James Beard Foundation, focusing on Women’s Leadership & LGBTQ programs. “Being late, having to grin and bear rude customers’ comments, lack of emotional or mental support, lack of secure housing or familial support” are all reasons that an employee could be seen as “not the right fit.” On an encouraging note, there are other legislative pushes that, while helping all workers, could protect trans people specifically. Prytula says doing away with tipped minimum wage would mean trans food service workers would be more likely to earn a living wage without monitoring their appearance for the sake of transphobic customers. Doing away with at-will employment could do a lot too, as Sarah Jones writes for New York Magazine, as trying to sue your former employers for trans discrimination “can burden workers who don’t have the independent means to hold their former employers accountable.” Spehar also says more change needs to come from within the industry, and not only from outside legislation. “Without creating a culture of understanding for the out-of-work burdens that disproportionately affect the LGBTQ community, we are all still held to the same ‘professional’ standards and expectations created by cis white culture,” they say. That means restaurant owners and nonprofits prioritizing anti-bias training, putting resources toward helping queer and trans people open their own businesses, and centering the fact that the food industry “is built foundationally on black, queer, women’s, and immigrant’s labor.” And making sure these issues take priority outside of Pride month, when many businesses use the LGBTQ community for marketing gimmicks. Michaels still sees the food service industry as a place where trans people can thrive. She notes that James Beard was an out gay man at a time when that wasn’t widely accepted, and how restaurants and bars, especially Black- and women-owned restaurants and organizations, are committing themselves to diversity, equity, and inclusion work. But she also notes there’s a bigger picture outside the rights of those who find employment. “I don’t know that it is in legislation,” says Michaels. The SCOTUS ruling is an important piece in the massive, and mostly incomplete, puzzle of legislation and activism that’s needed to truly secure equitable treatment for trans people. “Legislation, as we’ve seen, can be fickle, and driven by administration, politicized,” says Spehar, “and in the end will never do what humanity and compassion from the industry can do.” from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2VwynCf

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/06/for-trans-people-in-service-industry.html