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Hi! My name is Denise Norris and I'm the Founding Director of
Association of Transgender Professionals.
I'm here today to give you a brief overview of the organization's
vision and goals.
Basically cover three things today
which is that we all have gender expression
the economic inequalities facing people with gender expression diversity
and the organization we've created to address these inequalities.
Gender expression is the sum up all the gender attributes or gender cues
that we present to the world. It can be our mannerisms, our clothing,
even our bodies
It can be a roles. It can even be who we have as a partner.
These can be purposeful expressions or they could be involuntary expressions,
but what it does is create an impression in the observer
what our gender is.
Gender Expression should not be confused with Gender Identity
Gender Identity is a
very court internal op self awareness of one gender
whereas gender expression is the manifestation
of the person's gender identity
and outside observer
loksatta gender expression
person needs
what that person shed tears based upon the observers own cultural expectations
and their particular frame of reference and how old they c gender
now this is the important part
the gender
c
when we look at other person
is not necessarily
their gender identity
it is only our interpretation
uh... their gender expression
when someone's gender expression fails to meet society's expectations
of what that personal gender expression should be
we call that a non-conforming gender expression
non-conforming gender expression can be something as common as a tomboy who
prefers playing baseball
rather than playing with dolls as adults it can be the soccer mom who prefers to
wear slacks or pant suits to the formal affair it can be the men
who chooses a career traditionally associated with women such as nursing
it can be the woman who falls in love
with another woman and at the far end scale
this includes people who identified as transgender
what bind all these examples together
is that society
decided
that that person's gender expression
does not control
society's expectations
statement this nation discrimination at her
rats that of people but not conforming tender expressions begins in the
schoolyard
whipped wants of *** and diet coke for the girls who prefer to play baseball
cries of sissy and *** for the boys who prefer the library to rough housing
with their peers
if the child is not forced into conformity by this bullying
d discrimination harassment stigmatizing continues into adulthood
where people are denied job opportunities social opportunities in
even education opportunities merely because their gender expression is
different
in fact the greater the gender expression is different
the higher the incident great
of discrimination
harassment and even violence
the pressure to have a conforming gender expression
operates nearly universally throughout our society
for most of the population what we would call
sister under or hetero normative
they don't see or field is discrimination
because their differences are very slight
this discrimination begins to become apparent with people who identifies
lesbian gay
the discrimination becomes particularly acute
for people who identifies transgender as they can have the most visible
non-conforming gender expression
in a recent study of discrimination of transgender people in the united states
it was found that
the average unemployment rate was double the national standard double that again
for people of color forty seven percent experienced adverse job outcomes
ninety percent experienced
harassment or took steps to hide who they were to avoid it
twenty six percent report they had lost the job for being gender non-conforming
and sixteen percent reported they work and underground economy such as drug
trade or sex trade in order to survive
this inequality
must be addressed
fold-out economic equality that can be no
social equality the problem is no-one is focusing on the needs of people with
extreme gender expression diversity on the national scale
there are some organizations doing it locally
and there are some
l g_d_p_ organizations but
their interest is predominately aligned with ellen g based upon a number of
advances
in the workplace and in society we believe that tying is
to launch a national organization it's kind of focus on the needs of gender
expression diversity
in the workplace
and help corporations
but this into their
inclusion and diversity models
there is nothing but positive outcomes for the work ahead of us
we know that seventy eight percent of the people who are authentic in the
workplace record a better work experience and higher job performance
this translates into a better life
vision
of the association for a_t_p_
is the advocate economic equality for people with not conforming gender
expressions and their identities
and we do that three ways
one we promote inclusion of gender expression diversity in the workplace
to we provide professional development services to accelerator own talents
preparedness dip into the workforce
and three we need to develop the employee recruiter channels necessary
but the employer's and professional recruiters
to build attack the talent that exists with inside our community
and we call this vision
acceptance
talent and placement
spells a
so we talk about our organization
we talk about
our vision
we believe that it dances in one area
say acceptance
brings advances intel complacent
which in turn gives opportunity to bring more advances into
acceptance in placement
cell by creating small advances in each of the three carriers have
our vision
we advance the entire
much more quickly
when we examine the full implications of our vision
they can see there's a wide range of community initiatives that a_t_p_
would be intrested in getting involved in
in fact far too many
new organization
during the next two years
ir incubation period
a_t_p_
will focus on some very
simple goals
in acceptance we want to increase awareness of gender expression diversity
including standardised training programs
any quality index
and workplace best practices
prior talent we won and courage professional development including
networking and mentoring
we want to spotlight our successes inside our community
we need to grow our membership because that's our greatest strength
create youth and student outreach for the incoming generation
as well as provide skills training so that we can achieve better things in the
workplace
and family for placement we need to develop our recruiting their arnaud
channels into the transgender community so we need to develop in crate those
channels for the employer's as well as for recruiting organizations
and even right down to local job fairs
i'd like to leave you with one final thought
about the obstacles our community faces and high resiliency when confronting
those obstacles
my mother
disowned me
i was fired from my job after eighteen years of loyal employment
i was forced into public assistance to survive
but still i had pressed for started a new career and rebuilt my immediate
family
you are not the find by falling
but hal will you rise after falling
i am a licensed practical nurse now and i'm studying to become n_r_a_ and
i have walked the streets and have been harassed nearly every day
but i will not change
i am back out there the next day with my head up up
this is techniques nars a founding director of the association of
transgender professionals
and i want to thank you for taking the time to learn about our association
and our vision
have a very good day.