Socialize

FacebookTwitterRSS

Stanton Speaks Out

Susan Stanton has finally responded publicly to the fallout to horrible St. Petersburg Times article. Lou Chibbaro Jr. of the Washington Blade interviewed Stanton, saying:

‘Susan has said all along that she’s not like other transgender people,’ feature writer Lane DeGregory wrote in the St. Petersburg Times article. ‘She feels uncomfortable even looking at some, “like I’m seeing a bunch of men in dresses,” ‘ DeGregory quoted her as saying.

That quote triggered a firestorm of criticism from transgender bloggers, who said Stanton appeared to be perpetuating the stereotypes of transgender people that anti-gay and anti-trans bigots use to put them down.

She said the intensity of the hostility she received from transgender people was ‘far worse’ than the hostility she encountered from straights who demanded she be fired from her city manager’s job.

Her suggestion that transgender people have treated her worse than people demanding she be fired, is pretty outrageous. From Tampa Bay Online:

Steven Stanton was hired as a man for the people, this man just because he wants to wear a dress, he needs to stay out of the ladies room!He needs to either be fired or resign asap! I feel so sorry that he can get on TV and tell the Florida Public, but yet leaves his son in the dark that Dad is about to be no longer Dad! If he truly loves his son, then he would wait until his son was of age!

or

I feel horrible for the children & the wife! I hope God finds a way to help them get through this. As for the Freak Stanton, he should be fired asap from the City. You see, this is what happens in the PC world when you give Freaks like gays-lesbians rights. What is this guy wanted to marry a goat, then have a sex change operation to be a Goat, or a Dog, or a Cow.

or

I agree with the sentiments of the posts here. This man is truly a disturbed person and should not be given a platform to force his deviant behavior onto the rest of the world. His wife and children will have to live with his decisions forever. What about his young boy? Wow alot of therapy w/o the person who is he father, no matter what he wants to be. He will always be a man. That is how he was born.

That’s just a taste of how the “straight people” that wanted her fired, acted. I’m not sure how transgender people could have attacked her any more ferociously than the “straight” community.

But I’m not surprised by Stanton’s reaction. Being in transgender advocacy and having transitioned only a short 8 months ago, Stanton doesn’t take into account the tumultuous relationship of the transgender community and the Human Rights Campaign.

Stanton upset transgender activists and nearly all of the nation’s transgender rights groups by siding with Pelosi and Frank, saying she believed passing a gay-only version of ENDA as a “first step” would help open the way for passing a trans-inclusive bill. The House passed the gay-only measure in November by a vote of 235 to 184. Stanton’s association with HRC fueled criticism against her by many trans activists, who accused HRC of betraying the trans community by failing to oppose a non-trans-inclusive ENDA.

HRC spokesperson Brad Luna said Stanton spoke before HRC functions, including a board meeting, but that she has “no formal role” with the group.

Stanton went on to say that:

“The politics changed,” she said. “I know people want to take their ball and bat off the ball field. I think that’s a mistake. I do understand the anger with the Human Rights Campaign. But I also understand that, as someone who used to have to be responsible for making those types of decisions, sometimes you’ve got to be pragmatic and sometimes the importance of being at the table is in conflict with the need to have a sense of community.”Stanton said her years as a city manager, where she had to juggle competing political interests, made her acutely aware of the need for achieving objectives on an incremental basis rather than taking an “all-or-nothing” approach.

Not even former HRC Board member, Donna Rose, supported the HRC in their actions during the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) fiasco. If Stanton wants the transgender community to take her seriously, she should lay off the John Aravosis/HRC rhetoric. Calling the efforts of United ENDA as “all or nothing” is a tactic that was used during the ENDA debate to smear those who disagreed with Representative Barney Frank’s “pragmatic” approach. In light of comments after the ENDA vote of by Representative Tammy Baldwin (stating that we had the votes to pass 2015), the “all or nothing” language is simply propaganda. This rhetoric only fuels the idea that Stanton is a neophyte of the HRC, regardless of if she’s collecting a check.

Concerning the St. Petersburg Times article titled, “Susan Stanton’s lonely transformation”, she says:

‘Since the publication of this story, I have received hundreds of e-mails from people all over the nation expressing their disappointment and anger for the hurtful and insensitive statements that have been attributed to me,’ she wrote. ‘Simply stated, this article is not an accurate representation of my beliefs concerning the transgender community or my experiences as a transgender person.’

Being misquoted in a newspaper isn’t anything new. But Stanton hasn’t clarified what was false about the St. Petersburg Times article and hasn’t asked for a retraction. Without her doing so, the Blade interview raises more questions than it answers.

Related content:

  1. Don Lemon’s Transphobia Targets a Child and CNN-GLAAD-NCTE-NGLTF-HRC-GayInc Is Still Silent
  2. …Though, to be Fair, Probably Not as Much as HRC Has
Better Related Posts Plugin
avatarTransadvocate contributor: Marti Abernathey  (1924 Posts)

Marti Abernathey is Transadvocate.com's blog editor. She's also a podcaster, activist, and radiologic technologist in Madison, Wisconsin. She's been a part of various internet radio ventures such as TSR Live!, The T-Party, and The Radical Trannies, to name a few. As an advocate she's previously been involved with the Indiana Transgender Rights Advocacy Alliance, Rock Indiana Campaign for Equality, and the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition. She's taken vital roles as a grass roots community organizer in The Indianapolis Tax Day Protest (2003), The Indy Pride HRC Protest (2004), Transgender Day of Remembrance (2004), Indiana's Witch Hunt (2005), and the Rally At The Statehouse (the largest ever GLBT protest in Indiana - 3/2005). She was a delegate from Indiana to the Democratic National Convention and a member of Barack Obama's LGBT Steering and Policy Committee.


  • Dalmax

    It is with much sadness that I watch Susan Stanton degenerate into a caricature of herself, as a ‘representative’ of the trans community. She certainly doesn’t represent me and, as far as I can tell by her own statements, she isn’t even sure what to represent anymore.

    As someone who long ago abandoned the notion that the HRC will ever comply with our political needs, I can’t help but wonder what rock Susan was hiding under for all of the years she pondered her emergence.

    While everyone is eligible to formulate their own political leaning, it really should be based on fact, accuracy and historical precedence. Whatever convinced S Stanton that Barney Frank would be an ally must be some kind of powerful mojo.

    I hope Susan Stanton gets her head on straight and her act together and remembers what her priorities are; she has a family in pain, a seriously limited future and a somewhat off-kilter perspective.

  • http://Showinghowtodoitright... Stellewriter

    My last words regarding Susan Stanton….

    I am moving on!

    There are bigger issues we need to focus on instead of the foment which is being rehashed by the media. Why is this continuing anyway? Do you suppose a lot of HRC and GLBt pressure is at play? Do you suppose that the liberal gay laden press is having a field day?

    How about we drop it and focus on smaller issues like:

    • Equality and recognition under the law.
    • Equal medical access and treament
    • Right to work without discrimiation and harrassment
    • Recognition and fair treatment by social and community services.

    And so on… Let move on! Susan can sort her life out on her own, and our silence regarding her may speak louder than even the HRC and the GLBt can imagine.

    On The other issues….Take up arms and let’s fight! Let’s get going and move on!

  • Samantha Davis

    The reason why we won’t let this die is because we want to make sure that Stanton, and others who would do the same, are held responsible for their actions.

    As far as I’m concerned, I’m just going to sit back and watch Stanton’s fortunes wither away. Maybe tomorrow she will better understand what it means to face discrimination.

  • http://enoughnonsense.wordpress.com/ Leigh

    “Susan Stanton said that the intensity of the hostility she received from transgender people was “far worse” than the hostility she encountered from straights who demanded she be fired from her city manager’s job.”

    ….. And THAT ladies, gentlemen and the undecided hoards is the REAL story here. I have said time and again that if your heterosexual AND transsexual you will be tar’d and feathered by the transgenders and the gays, all of whom believe that all transsexuals are at their core… GAY.

    Hopefully Susan Stanton will see the writing on the wall and decide if she will become a woman or a pin up for the GLBT ..

  • http://gorgonqueen.wordpress.com Val

    > the transgenders and the gays, all of whom believe that all transsexuals are at their core… GAY.

    I gather that you live in a very small, airless cardboard box furnished only with dirty mirrors.

  • http://gorgonqueen.wordpress.com Val

    Actually, this is so spectacularly stupid that I just have to be more blunt about it.

    Is Leigh really now claiming that the defining characteristic of a “true (non-transgendered) transsexual” is that they are necessarily heterosexual?

    From which it follows that all real women (since HBS women are “real women” in a very narrrow sense particular to Leigh and her cohort) are also necessarily heterosexual.

    Wow. What a stupendously sexist position to take, just to keep your ideology pure.

  • http://Showinghowtodoitright... Stellewriter

    What are we doing????

    With no regard to the original subject of this blog, what are we now doing? IT stinks! What we as the Trans-community have now ended up doing, is no less than acting out the strife that HRC and the greater GLBt wants us to portray. By our infighting and tearing apart of our bonds they become strong. Their self-absorbed and elitist vision for power and control is what drives HRC and the militant gay community. Please, understand that I am not talking about the loving and kind gay community, rather, the Sturmabteilung and backroom body grabbers the likes of Barney Frank and ilk. It is all about diverting the public’s attention from their moving into power positions within corporate America and it wealth for strictly self-serving means. It is not about equality. One cannot proclaim equality and ignore others who should share it the rights of common wellbeing. When B. Frank spoke on the floor, he literally was speaking treason and against the very fabric of our constitution and billing of rights. It can be said no other way, as the courts have already defined that stance, and in the days of George Wallace a matter of unconstitutional and discriminatory practice. HRC and the thugs surrounding Joe Solmonese are telling us that we are not welcome to use the public toilets, and that we cannot drink from the public fountain.

    They are telling us that we are not fit to hold meaningful jobs and that we are freaks who are not acceptable to the society. They did this publically, and in the backroom worked up a plan toe keep us divisive so as to be seen as freaks by society. There is no way around the matter. We are the propaganda tool for the “New Elite” or “pan-Aryan” mentality. We are the ones chosen to be maligned and abused so the money and power laden gay aristocracy can go unchallenged and unnoticed. While they slide into more and more of the fabric of society carefully showing themselves as relative conservatives in middle road family living, we on the other hand are daily sliding into the realm of the bizarre and perceived danger zone. A gay boy scout leader is almost now acceptable, but a GID father is to be literally sent to the concentration camps of despair and sure death. It is bigotry, inequality, intolerance, unfairness, chauvinism, sexism, racism, bias, insularity, prejudice,…. it is “Discrimination” – Do You Get It? The very organization that claims the throne for equality is the single most active force in denying the Transgender simple subsistence. It is the new gay sectarian snobbery, which has worked to control other gay and lesbian enclaves and subordinate them. Worse, they have actively separated and divided the Trans-community so as to use us as a diversion. We are HRC millions behind in ability, and legislatively separated (segregated), and we are ripping each others clothes off exposing our weaknesses. History is repeating its self in an awful way.

    Everyone may see this as radical, but it follows history in great detail. It is a political strategy that has worked. It is working now! I remember clearly the comments of a child of the Holocaust, he said he was dumbfounded to discover that his own father, a minister in 30’sGermany was duped by the propaganda of the era. First it was the Transgender / Effeminates who were singled out, followed by spurious fringe groups, then political threats and press, educators, the church and finally the Jews. I have no doubt that we are duped, and so is the public. No doubt at all.

  • http://enoughnonsense.wordpress.com/ Leigh

    Susan is less than a year old and still wet behind the ears. She is as a meteor, a short burst of light across the night sky that will cool and fade. Only then will she be able to start and hopefully finish the transition she gave up so much to accomplish.

  • http://enoughnonsense.wordpress.com/ Leigh

    No, that isn’t what I am saying and you well know that. But then again Val, there is nothing I can say that you don’t twist to your own meaning.

  • http://gorgonqueen.wordpress.com Val

    In all honesty, I don’t think Leigh has enough grasp of syllogism to see what how revealingly absurd this all is. The point is not that she really thinks that “all real women are heterosexual” but that her efforts to sustain as rigid as possible an “us against them” are so ill-considered, based on such worthlessly prejudicial generalizations, that in fact her own “meanings” twist by themselves into non-sequiturs worthy of the driest comedy.

  • http://enoughnonsense.wordpress.com/ Leigh

    Oh shut up val .. you drive me to drink!

    “For example, given the premise, “all fish live underwater” and “all mackerel are fish”, my wife will conclude, not that “all mackerel live underwater”, but that “if she buys kippers it will not rain”, or that “trout live in trees”, or even that “I do not love her any more.” This she calls “using her intuition”. I call it “crap”, and it gets me very *irritated* because it is not logical.” … John Cleese…

    ALL Women ARE illogical … do you understand dear ?

    BTW .. as a brit I happen to love dry comedy :)