Mara Keisling, Founding Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, spoke to a crowd of students, staff, and administrators on Thursday morning last week, covering a lot of ground, including the intersection of gender identity and other characteristics like race and disability (if she isn’t supporting rights for people with disabilities, for example, she isn’t helping all trans people), issues transgender people have with insurance coverage, employment discrimination, and medical care. The one thing that all transgender people have in common…they’re people! So treat them like people! Keisling closed quoting Roger Ebert’s version of the Golden Rule:
“I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”
Andersen Library can help you can learn more, either about topics Keisling brought up or about gender identity in general. Ask a Librarian if you’d like help.
Searching HALCat would find titles such as In a queer voice: Journeys of resilience from adolescence to adulthood (3rd-floor Main Collection HQ76.27.Y68 S23 2013), The transgender studies reader 2 (3rd-floor Main Collection HQ77.9 .T72 2013), I’m just Anneke: The family journey (2nd-floor Academic DVDs HQ77.9 .I4 2010), and Transgender voices: Beyond women and men (3rd-floor Main Collection HQ77.7 .G57 2008). You also would find government information, such as Employment Non-Discrimination Act ensuring opportunity for all Americans , a hearing of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions that is available online. (See an update on ENDA from CQ Weekly dated Nov. 11, 2013.)
Search article databases, such as LGBT Life with Full Text, for articles such as “A Transwoman’s No Cakewalk” (Between the Lines, 2013:Jul.11, pp.8-9) and “Managing uncertainty: A grounded theory of stigma in transgender health care encounters” (Social Science & Medicine, 2013, vol.84, pp.22-29).
Andersen Library is a federal and Wisconsin depository library with federal and state government documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in various formats (print, DVD/CD-ROM, online). Check out your government at Andersen Library!
