everything starts somewhere

an origin story, probably, part one

The most important thing Internet people should know about me is that I am an attorney. I am not saying that for any other reason except to note that I PRIMARILY look at the public policy around Gender Identity through a legal lens. I usually do not have enough time and energy to look at this through any other lens. It isn’t really my business/problem/concern if adult men decide to “live as a woman.” 99% of the time, that fact does not impact my life one way or the other. The 99% percent here is a rhetorical device to suggest that Gender Identity mostly doesn’t matter personally, to me; actual percentages may vary.

The second most important thing Internet people should know about me is that I have always been mistaken for a boy and, when a grew up, as a man. Every day, I am called “sir.” I am gender nonconforming, and I have known I was gay for a really long time. Being me has given me the perspective that no one should face discrimination on the basis of their sex, appearance or sexual orientation.

I will continue to believe that no one should face irrational discrimination, even as people make faith-based arguments that I don’t agree with, that a person becomes the opposite sex because they say so.

The first time I became aware of “Gender Identity” in a legal context was around 1996 when Maryland Democratic Delegates who were very well-meaning introduced legislation to prohibit discrimination based on Gender Identity. As anyone who can read can tell you (you don’t need to be a lawyer to see the problem), the definition of Gender Identity is completely circular and engulfs protections in law on the basis of sex. I have written about this more times that I can count, and I am going to assume that if you have paid any attention, you are familiar with the problem of Gender Identity laws.

The definition of “gender identity” from Maryland House Bill 325, introduced by Delegates Sharon Grosfeld and Salima Siler Marriott

Thus began, in the 1996, my first foray into the completely painful world of transgender activism. I was 25 years old in 1996, and had been out of law school since May 1995. I had only lived in Maryland since the fall of 1995. I was a nobody. But I was a lesbian, and a lesbian activist, so I relatively quickly located the political gays. I found the Free State Justice Campaign and got on the board - and was later kicked off the board over the transgender issue, as that organization wanted to continue to push for Gender Identity. I later was on the Board of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Baltimore and co-created its Political Action Committee, where myself and another lesbian crafted strategy around passing protections based on sexual orientation while arguing that Gender Identity could be covered by sex, under the theory articulated in Price Waterhouse (and we were right about that). This 1996 bill failed, but came back again and again, sometimes attaching itself to the bill to ban discrimination based on “sexual orientation.”

Because I (and precious few other lesbians who shall always remain nameless because I know how to keep a secret and they now have political positions where they are not comfortable being openly critical of Gender Identity) asked questions in Maryland about this Gender Identity language in the bill we were trying to pass in Maryland, I got a lot of harassment. This was before “social media,” so the harassment was in the form of harassing telephone calls to my landline and a rock thrown at my house. It came in the form of some man named John (maybe? it’s been a long time) who called himself Julie inserting himself into my date with a friend at the old Dougherty’s Pub with fist pounding on a table. During this time is when I first started having panic attacks, because during this time I learned how deranged some of the people in the “transgender community” are.

I had to live with this, because I was strongly, passionately, fervently working to pass a law in Maryland to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. The first bill I worked on in Maryland was 1996’s House Bill 67, which failed. It failed again in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000. The 1999 bill advanced farther than it ever had; the loss that year was brutal. We were so close, my girlfriend at the time and I were leafletting the Baltimore Eagle, a leather bar, at 12 at night to ask the leather daddies to call their representatives.

I spent a great deal of my mid to late 20s talking to people about why discrimination based on sexual orientation was wrong, and why we should ban it. I spend hundreds of hours strategizing about how to accomplish this goal. And one of the strategies we used to make the case for the bill was to obtain EVIDENCE that we needed a law to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and to find a CHAMPION.

We found a champion in Governor Parris Glendening, whose had a gay brother who died of AIDS. And after the death of the 2000 bill (which we knew would die before it ever started), we got our mechanism for collecting EVIDENCE. the Governor established Special Commission to Study Sexual-Orientation Discrimination in Maryland. The job of the Special Commission was to hold meetings across the state, gather evidence, and write a report with recommendations to the governor of what to do about the problem of discrimination based on sexual orientation. One of my best friends at the time who was just as dedicated to getting this bill passed as I was was on the Special Commission. I accompanied the Special Commission on its trips around the state, took notes, and helped write the Interim Report the Special Commission issued. At every commission hearing, there was at least one or two transgender individuals who were VERY ANGRY that people in their communities wouldn’t recognize them as a member of the opposite sex. And although that might be very sad for them, it did not derail the work of the Special Commission, which ultimately concluded that discrimination based on sexual orientation occurs in Maryland. The Special Commission recommended in its Interim Report that the legislature consider and pass a law to ban such discrimination. The Interim Report deferred action on whether people were discriminated in the state on a widespread basis because of their transgender status, and the Final Report was also deferred with a one-page missive that the Final Report was a moot point after the Maryland legislature passed the law banning sexual orientation discrimination in 2001.

Seriously one of the happiest days of my life; I am in the second row, fourth from the right (2001)

Inscription on a book gifted to me by Governor Glendening, which was also signed by various sponsors of the legislation (2001)

Pen used to sign Senate Bill 205 (2001)

Our success with Senate Bill 205 made several transgender women VERY ANGRY, and some of them have been writing about how evil I am for several decades as a result. One such person who does not live in Maryland, Katrina Rose, has devoted A LOT OF SPACE to me in various places, including in this footnote in a 2017 article (if you want to read through Katrina Rose’s articles on these topics, they appear to be collected here):

Shannon Avery, now a judge, has long painted the outcome of a gubernatorial commission, on which she served and which was a springboard for passage of Maryland's gay-only rights law in 2001, as a win for trans people, characterizing herself and the other participants as having been “on the cutting edge in 2001 when they used alternative strategies to fight for the rights of transgender and gender-nonconforming people.” Aaron S. Merki, Shannon Avery, and Anne Blackfield, The Future of LGBT Civil Rights and Equality in Maryland, 44 U. BALT. L.F. 43, 59 (2013); see INTERIM REPORT OF THE SPECIAL COMMISSION TO STUDY SEXUAL ORIENTATION DISCRIMINATION IN MARYLAND 22 (2000). But the commission's Interim Report resulted in no formal judicial decision or opinion, no formal administrative ruling, and no public declaration of any kind; in short, unlike the statute's prohibition against discrimination based on sexual orientation (ch. 340, § 19(a), 2001 Md. Laws 2118), which most if not all employers, proprietors and landlords who might otherwise be predisposed to engage in such discrimination would become aware of and likely obey in spite of opposing the statute, the purported trans protections not only were nowhere to be found in readily accessible statutory law or formal administrative regulations, they never saw the light of day as informal, yet public, discourse as part of the Commission's final report--because the Commission issued no final report other than a letter to Gov. Parris Glendenning. Kara Fox, Maryland Commission Composes Letter, WASH. BLADE, July 6, 2001, http://www.washblade.com/local/010706d.htm (on file with author). The honor of touting the gay-only rights law to the state's legal practitioners fell to a notoriously vicious opponent of true trans equality. Dawn Ennis, Lesbian Feminist Cathy Brennan Sues AfterEllen for Defamation, THE ADVOCATE (Aug. 27, 2015, 8:12 PM), http://www.advocate.com/feminism/2015/08/27/cathy-brennan-sues-afterellen-defamation [http://perma.cc/U282QX5P]; Cristan Williams, TERF supports antigay activist group, TRANSADVOCATE (Oct. 16, 2013), http://www.transadvocate.com/terf-supports-anti-gay-activist-group_n_10335.htm [http://perma.cc/L9VBBHCP]. In her 2002 article in the Maryland Bar Journal, Brennan wrote of the concrete statutory protections for gays, lesbians, bisexuals (and heterosexuals). And while a third of the article actually was devoted to trans matters, there were only elucidations upon how transsexuals “may” be protected if perceived to be gay, “may” be protected under disability theory and “may” be protected under gender discrimination theory, there were no citations to any Maryland decisions. Catherine M. Brennan, Banning Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation: A Primer on Maryland's New Civil Rights Law, MD. BAR J. 50, 53-54 (2002).

Any practical relevance to her assertions was negated by the reality of them merely being “emerging legal theories” that lawyers “should be mindful of.” Id. at 50, 54. Cheered on by Avery, Brennan had touted ethereal trans rights during the 2001 legislative session--again to justify not making trans people statutorily equal to lesbians, gays and bisexuals. Cathy Brennan, Grave Disservice, WASH. BLADE, Jan. 5, 2001, at 27; Shannon E. Avery, Meaningless Effort, WASH. BLADE, Jan. 19, 2001, at 27. During the 2011 Maryland legislative session, when repeatedly asked to provide any citation to anything in Maryland state law that would support the Commission's excessively overoptimistic assessment of trans legal protections, Brennan referred to Price Waterhouse and a string of federal decisions based thereon--none from Maryland or even from the federal Fourth Circuit. Cathy Brennan, Comments to Come to Think of it, I've Never Seen Morgan Meneses-Sheets and Cathy Brennan in the Same Room at the Same Time, ENDABLOG (Feb. 17, 2011, 2:58 PM), https://endablog.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/come-to-think-of-it-I've-never-seen-morgan-meneses-sheets-and-cathy-brennan-in-the-same-room-at-the-same-time [http://perma.cc/Q8ERRBKK] Not until April 10, 2014 would a court in Maryland issue a published decision favorable to a trans person in a case applying a Price Waterhouse analysis to Maryland sex discrimination law. Finkle v. Howard County, 12 F. Supp. 3d 780, 788 (D. Md. 2014). By then, a bill to actually add trans people to state law had been passed by both houses of the Maryland General Assembly and was only awaiting Gov. Martin O'Malley's signature. See Fairness for All Marylanders Act of 2014, Ch. 474, sec. 2, § 20-101(E), 2014 Md. Laws 1, 2.

Katrina Rose doesn’t like me. I don’t like Katrina Rose either. Katrina Rose has attempted to get me fired from my employment simply because of my political advocacy; I believe this screenshot below was the first time Katrina Rose threatened my employment; the letter Katrina Rose is highlighting in the blog post Katrina Rose wrote appeared in the Washington Blade in 2001:

Whatever Katrina Rose thinks of me, our strategy WORKED. We finally passed an anti-discrimination bill to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. After that years-long effort to pass the Anti-Discrimination Act, I mostly retired from Gay Activism. I was completely burned out and also fed up dealing with angry transgender people. I did work in Baltimore City to pass a municipal law to ban discrimination based on Gender Identity in employment (because, again, I don’t think people should be fired because of their appearance or personality or their beliefs about themselves), I did some work around Marriage Equality, but I mostly focused on other things (having a career, marriage, kids).

At the time I stopped engaging in activism that brought me close to the concept of Gender Identity (circa 2001), no one seemed to think that you could change your sex.

Fast forward to 2011. A friend of my then-girlfriend was fired from his job at a local arts nonprofit, and he believed that this occurred because he was a trans man. Because he worked in Baltimore City, he had legal redress (remember that bill I helped pass?). I represented him for free and negotiated a small settlement. I also agreed to dip my toe back into looking at banning discrimination at the state level based on Gender Identity.

And there it was – the same circular, meaningless definition of Gender Identity from 1996. In 2011. Nothing had changed. In the decade I had not paid attention to this issue, transgender activists did nothing to change their strategy. They just kept repeating the same nonsense language.

The definition of “gender identity” from House Bill 235 (2011)

This language doesn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense in 1996. It didn’t make sense in 2011. It doesn’t make sense in 2022.

However, by 2011, the language was FULLY BAKED in the minds of transgender activists. And another thing: by 2011, transgender people (some, not all) believed they actually were the opposite sex. But because I agreed to help efforts at the state level for my then-girlfriend’s friend, and because I knew this bill wasn’t passing, I agreed to lobby for the bill with the stupid language. At the same time, I told transgender activists in Maryland over and over that the circular definition of Gender Identity was a problem for women, that it reified stereotypes and eviscerated protections based on sex. When I was lobbying for House Bill 235, none of these transgender activists told me I was a transphobe. They listened to me. And the bill advanced further than it had before.

The transgender community was not universally in favor of House Bill 235. Some transgender activists opposed House Bill 235 because it did not include public accommodations (meaning that it didn’t include bathrooms).

And ultimately, House Bill 235 did not pass. I remained willing to continue to work on the bill, so long as my concerns about the circular definition were addressed. Shockingly, after working for six months to help enact a bill to protect transgender people from employment discrimination, the transgender activists I had worked with on the bill – most notably failed politician Dana Beyer and Autumn Sandeen – told me I was a transphobe.

Make it make sense. None of it made sense.

So I started doing some looking around, online, beyond my circle of political allies who also thought the definition of Gender Identity was circular and harmful.

I cannot really remember when I first became aware of the radical feminist blogs, but it was probably in the spring of 2011. I think it was my then-girlfriend who found them (yes, the same one with the trans man friend. That ex-girlfriend has gone full QAnon now and we are not in touch). The blogs I remember were Radfem Crafts (which was my favorite), Scum-o-Rama (also a favorite), No Anodyne, Undercover Punk, Femonade and Gender Trender. Eventually, most of these rad fem bloggers and I started corresponding, as I was one of the only people at the time raising critical questions about Gender Identity in public under my real name. Two of those bloggers turned out to be lawyers and one of them later agreed to come out under her own name to talk about these issues. Around the same time as I found the radical feminist blogs, a real-life friend of mine who worked at the United Nations let me know that the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was accepting communications from people across the globe on issues that impact the rights of women. I knew what would make a really great communication on this topic. You can read the UN letter here. One of the radical feminist bloggers used this occasion to come out under her real name.

The reaction from the transgender activists to the UN letter was swift and painful. Enabled by social media, I received hundreds of death threats. At least one of the people who threatened me, Anthony Casebeer, had real life consequences for his behavior, and was forced to resign from the Kentucky Fairness Alliance for threatening to kill me.  “Renowned” transgender activist Monica Roberts also was forced to apologize to me. The trans man who I had helped obtain a settlement agreed that I should die for daring to say out loud that the circular definition of Gender Identity made no sense.

Oh, and my panic attacks came back.