The
New York Times highlights visibility of transgender people through candidature in US elections. As far as I am aware there hasn't been similar transparency - or merely media attention - in Australian elections.
Theresa Sparks, a candidate for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, is running on what some might see as a conservative platform: she is pro-development and anti-loitering, pro-police and anti-grime. She has been endorsed by the mayor, the city's firefighters' union and the county deputy sheriff's association.
But that is not what sets Ms. Sparks apart; it is her past. Until a decade ago, Ms. Sparks was a man, before a gender reassignment surgery. And while her sex may have changed, her politics did not.
The
Times goes on to report that -
If elected, Ms. Sparks would be the first transgender supervisor in San Francisco — the liberal enclave where Harvey Milk was elected as one of the nation's first openly gay officials in 1977, and perhaps the only place where Ms. Sparks might be considered right-of-center.
But she is not the only transgender person campaigning for public office this fall. And unlike in years past, when such candidates were often considered mere curiosities, several are within striking distance of historic victories.
Across San Francisco Bay, for example, Victoria Kolakowski was the leading vote-getter in a June election for Superior Court judge in Alameda County; a victory in a runoff next month would make her the first transgender trial court judge in the nation.
"I want people to know that we are capable of being everything", Ms. Kolakowski said.
In Oklahoma, Brittany Novotny, a 30-year-old Democrat, is competitive in the Republican-leaning 84th District for the State House of Representatives, despite supporters of her opponent who have ridiculed her as a "confused it". And there are transgender incumbents in Oregon — where the mayor of Silverton, Stu Rasmussen, is seeking a fourth term, and her second as a woman — and Hawaii, where Kim Coco Iwamoto is seeking to return to the State Board of Education. ...
While most of the transgender candidates have been Democrats, in Florida, Donna Milo — a pro-gun, anti-tax, male-to-female Republican (and, interestingly enough, anti-same-sex marriage) — lost a primary for Congress in August. She did, however, receive 22.5 percent of the vote.
The
Times looks on the bright side in commenting that -
All of which has been hailed by advocates as both a sign of acceptance and, they hope, a sign that actual issues are being valued more than gender stereotypes.
"People aren't sitting around saying, 'Gee, I wish we had a transgender judge'," said Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality in Washington. "They're saying, 'We want a really good judge.'" Gay rights activists hope that the visibility of the candidates will help normalize people's relations with people who are transgender — a broad category that includes heterosexual cross-dressers, homosexual drag queens and kings, and those who believe that they were born in the wrong body.
