Login / RegisterTransgender activist not cheering Jenna Talackova’s Miss Universe breakthrough
While many LGBT rights advocates are celebrating Jenna Talackova’s successful fight to open the Miss Universe beauty pageant to transgender women, a Vancouver activist says it’s not much of a victory in the struggle for equality.
Tami Starlight, the executive director of the Vancouver Transgender Day of Remembrance Society and an organizer of last year’s Trans Celebration and Liberation March, told the Straight that there’s “almost nothing good” about the Miss Universe Organization’s announcement today (April 10) that it plans to change its rules to allow transgender women to compete.
“This whole deal is complicated at best,” Starlight said by phone from her home. “She’s fighting to get into a space in a system that is really terrible in general. It’s highly objectifying. It’s all about making money.”
The U.S.-based Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and National Center for Transgender Equality have both commended the New York–based Miss Universe Organization, owned by Donald Trump and NBC Universal, for the move. It came just weeks after Vancouver’s Talackova was disqualified from the Miss Universe Canada contest for being transgender.
“I feel that the community does a disservice by supporting and applauding this kind of nonsense—that she’s allowed to participate in such a thing,” Starlight said.
Indeed, Starlight asserted that the “only good thing” about this “sensationalized” story is that people are linking it to the need for the rights of transgender people to be protected by Canadian law.
On September 21, 2011, Randall Garrison, the NDP MP for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, introduced Bill C-279 in the House of Commons. His private member’s bill would amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to include gender identity and gender expression as prohibited grounds of discrimination. It would also amend the Criminal Code to outlaw hate speech that advocates genocide against groups distinguished by gender, and to allow evidence that a crime was motivated by hate based on gender to be taken into account during sentencing.
A previous version of the legislation was passed by the House of Commons in February 2011. But former Burnaby-Douglas NDP MP Bill Siksay’s Bill C-389 died in the Senate when the last federal election was called.
“We need hate-crime laws passed,” Starlight said. “We need inclusion laws passed. We need full recognition everywhere, hate-crime enhancement laws within the legal system—all of those things. We need the Canada Health Act to step up and identify trans people’s medical needs as necessary as anything else that’s deemed medically necessary in this country, instead of playing political football with our lives province by province, and delisting and relisting over and over. This stuff has to stop. Those are the fights.”
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if Miss Starlight thinks that this isn't good news just because "it's all about making money", does she also believe that there shouldn't be equality in sectors like finance, politics, or real estate?
i believe that the GLBT community should have equality in ALL respects, and especially in those that make money.
applauded rather than ridiculed."
Agreed!
And I find it disturbing that the quoted individual above is suggesting a change in the fundamental freedoms of the Kingdom. If the individual quoted above is "fighting" to have laws passed that will curtail certain forms of speech, the implication is that such speech is now lawful.
Since when did the Georgia Straight become a mouthpiece for fascists dressed in PC garb?
Land of greedy capitalists with their multitude of oppressions.
Right on Simkha!
EXACTLY!
Thanks for sending me some hope....and for the first 4 postings. Get with the times or stay in the dark oppressive dogmatic past.
Tami, Beautiful job sister! Thank you!
(Steve Y and the rest who showed their ignorance of the depth of the oppression and your complicitness in the maintenance of that oppressive system, y'all need to pull your heads out!)
So let us discuss rationally. What is the benefit of fighting for the right to transition from oppressed trans*woman to oppressed woman?
Also, the significant mainstream media attention about Jenna has opened the door for many others to get subsequent media attention, where we can talk about the real issues we all face.. If it wasn't for Jenna, i wouldn't have had the chance to do thi sinterview, which was watched live by thousands, and viewed subsequently on youtube by over 2000 people.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASPkWZkwfAc
While trump's position is strictkly towards accepting post-op transsexuals, and not others, this is still a stepping stone for bigger and better things to come. While i personally feel that beauty pageants are superficial and problematic in many ways, i'll take any victory in terms of acceptance.
if people had responded by criticizing the forum where that brave action happened, then everyone would have just have complained about the public transit system and we would still have racial segregation today.
I am not religious and I certainly question the teachings of the church. But I applaud those who have taken a public stance against discriminatory exclusion, just because the others haven't.
I don't want to get married, but I want the equal right to do so fully legalized and protected, so that it is there for those who choose to participate in what I think is an outdated and patriarchal institution. One that also objectifies women.
Also, I think country music is annoying and stupid. But if you set one up and tell me that no LGBT person is allowed to enter there and do the same stupid dance that everyone else is doing, you will be AMAZED at my sudden and intense passion to get inside and boot-scoot-my-mother-loving-bootie.
all. night. long.
READ BETWEEN THE LINES!.. If you believe that TRUMP and his executives at the Miss Universe pageant didn't know Jenna was transgender... Then I got news for you... They did.. The reality is is that they USED Jenna for RATINGS and nothing more. When you walk into a Miss Universe pageant or any pageant of such magnitude, you have to have a portfolio on who you are.. what you've accomplished.. various awards in other pageants and a list of credentials. etc..Thats how your judged.
In Jenna's case, TRUMP and his executives took advantage of the situation for nothing more then ratings. Regardless of the outcome if they let Jenna stay or disqualify her, the fact of the matter is that they literally USED Jenna and the LGBT community for nothing more then PROFIT.
Assuming your theory is true, then, congratulations LGBT community! You are now accepted enough to be greedily mined for profit by mainstream entertaiment -- like the rest of us! (Whoever "us" is.)
I remember the first time I ever saw a sex change, it was on the CBC on a black & white TV, goodness I feel old, I believe they were on 'The Fifth Estate'. There was a sex change and her husband being interviewed. That was the very first time I knew I wasn't a freak, I wasn't alone, there is place for me in this world. It gave me hope, it gave me the strength to go on, it was very lonely for me, as it is for many young ones that are trans.
You can have your debate on oppression, meat markets, etc. I will see the beauty in all of this. If this saves one child, it is beautiful.
In my life time - to see this happening gives me so much warmth in my heart. Thank you Jenna for having the strength to go through this
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